


A Lovers' Farewell V: A Loving Nature

by 852_Prospect_Archivist



Series: A Lover's Farewell by Blue Champagne [5]
Category: The Sentinel
Genre: M/M, Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 01:07:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/792273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/852_Prospect_Archivist/pseuds/852_Prospect_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The bull turns into a bear.<br/>This story is a sequel to A Lovers' Farewell IV: Love and Light.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Lovers' Farewell V: A Loving Nature

**Author's Note:**

> As always, click on the final installment and scroll down for the only warning.

## A Lovers' Farewell V: A Loving Nature

by Blue Champagne

Author's webpage: <http://members.aa.net/~bluecham/>

Author's disclaimer: Don't worry. I don't even pretend to own them. 

* * *

A LOVERS' FAREWELL V: A LOVING NATURE  


Silence, except for the sound of the engine and the tires on the road. 

"I did not laugh when you fell off the dock at Sammamish Lake." 

"Yes you sure as fucking hell did." 

More silence. 

"I may have smirked." 

"You laughed your ass off." 

Still more silence. 

"Jim..." 

"What?" 

"Do you still want to do this?" 

"Of course I still want to do this. We'll be fine. As soon as you admit you laughed." 

"I didn't laugh! Dad did, though." 

"I know. The creep." 

More silence. 

"I guess you were right; maybe we shouldn't have decided to leave straight from the session." 

"You want to turn this thing around and go back?" 

"I said no. We'll be fine." 

Engine, tires on road. 

"I didn't laugh." 

"Stephen...fine. You didn't laugh." 

More silence. 

Stephen muttered "Until you climbed back onto the dock okay. God, you looked like a wet cat." He began to snicker behind one hand. 

Jim managed a half-smile. "That was one shitty day." 

"You got yours, though. We were _all_ wet when the storm broke before we could make it back to the car." 

"Was that the same day the Loch Ness monster ate your fishing rod?" 

Stephen thought a minute. "Yeah, it was. Didn't recall that. You're right, that trip was a complete bust." 

More silence. 

"Jim?" 

"Hm?" 

"Are you going to be okay with Blair being at the next couple of sessions?" 

Jim growled. "If he and your shrink will quit smirking at each other whenever we get into an argument and they think we aren't looking." 

"You've got to admit, we regress about twenty years about as many minutes into every session." 

"I haven't got to admit anything," Jim grumped, though with a suspicious twitch at the corner of his habitually down-turned lips. 

"I thought you were going to pitch Blair out the window for a minute, there." 

"No, but he's gonna be striking back up an old friendship with his right hand if he doesn't quit telling perfect strangers things that _don't_ need to be discussed." 

"I think the bit about your yelling the wrong name last night was relevant, Jim." 

"Why?" 

"Because it was my name, obviously." 

Jim made a frustrated growling noise and risked a glance over at his brother. Stephen was lounging on the passenger side of the truck, smiling. Provocatively. Jim felt his face heat. "Um...I wasn't...actually thinking about you while Blair and I were at it, though." 

"Not consciously, no. Personally I think the most interesting thing is Blair's reaction." 

Jim sighed. 

"Come on, Jim. It could've been a hell of a lot worse. You were luckier than you deserve, considering. I mean, _I've_ never even done _that_ , and I don't have the world's greatest romantic history." 

"I just don't particularly enjoy being laughed at so hard by my lover that we have to call a time-out right at a crucial juncture in the proceedings, if you get my drift." 

"I bet the look on your face was priceless when you realized why he'd stopped and was staring at you." 

"Probably. Since that's when he started laughing." 

* * *

"Oh, hell." 

"What's the matter?" Jim called over the sound of rushing water. "Hey--is that a bite?" 

"Sort of. An eel's got my lure." 

Jim exploded laughing. 

"Shut up," Stephen muttered. He'd made the lure himself, and Jim had praised him for constructing the world's most humane one--the only fish that would take it would have to be actively suicidal anyway. "Get over here and help me get the damn thing loose." 

Jim set his pole in the holder staked into the bank and sloshed over to Stephen with the net. "I'll get him in the net. You hold him while I get a picture." 

"You're not taking my picture with any damned eel." 

"Come on, Stephen, be a sport. It's funny." 

Reluctantly, as he struggled to reel the slippery customer in, Stephen was forced to smile. "Well, we could make up a story about how it was pretty good, shish kebabed with baby russet potatoes and red Bell peppers." 

"Brian would puke," Jim snickered, pulling a camera out of one of his shirt pockets. Steve held up the thrashing eel, making a comically grossed-out face, and Jim snapped the picture. 

"There. Now get the damn thing off my hook." 

"Hope it hasn't got teeth." 

"I don't think there are any freshwater eels with teeth." 

"Yuck...well, it's no slimier than the average trout...bad news, Stephen, it swallowed the lure." 

"Shit." 

"Hey, put yourself in _its_ place. I bet it's not very happy about swallowing the Martian Death Lure from Hell. And hey, now you might actually catch something," Jim pointed out. "Something we can eat, that is." 

"At least I don't insist on using only dry flies the size of dandruff." 

"I'm a purist." 

"You're a loon," Stephen laughed along with Jim as he released the now quiescent-but-gill-flared eel. "Where'd you put the tackle box?" 

"Those rocks over there with the other stuff." Stephen sloshed off in search of a commercial lure as Jim returned to his pole and moved out to recast. 

"You're talking about Brian a lot lately," Stephen noted as he picked around in the box. "You do mean Rafe, right?" 

"Yeah. He and Blair have discovered they have more in common than they knew, so I'm seeing more of him outside work." 

"What kind of stuff do they have in common?" 

"Mostly, some things Blair and I don't really see eye-to-eye on. Music, movies--I am bored to my _boots_ by those dead-in-the-water foreign films with buck-oh-five budgets, where the subtitles read like they were translated into Mandarin Chinese before they were into English, and nothing happens for what feels like days at a time--except people have three-sentence conversations with as much animation as cigar-store indians, then the scene changes. Blair and Brian, on the other hand, can talk about them for hours." 

"Brian's not seeing anybody right now, is he?" 

"Not that I know of. I told you how he got screwed pretty bad recently in the dating pool." 

"I'd take a break after that, myself." 

"So, you in the market for a tall, dark, and handsome Major Crimes detective, Stephen?" Jim prodded, grinning over at his brother, where the latter stood in the shade of one of the trees that intermittently lined the bank. 

Stephen finished tying his lure and cast. "Dunno. Think I'd stand a chance with him?" 

"Are you kidding? You're one hot catch. You're interesting, attractive, well-educated, and rich. And so's Brian, all of the above. You at least know he wouldn't be after your money. You're also an extremely nice guy. What the hell else could anybody want? Although I...um...I wasn't sure if you were...well..." 

"You didn't know I still went for guys, is that what you're trying to say?" 

"Yeah," Jim said, more softly, becoming fascinated by the sinker attached to his line, bobbing in the water. 

"I didn't drop a brick when you kissed me, did I?" 

"No, but that was..." Jim trailed off uncomfortably. 

"That was you, right." Stephen sighed. "It's true there haven't been any guys since you, though not for lack of interest on my part. But I like women too, and it seemed safer to stick with them, since..." 

"Since I did what I did?" 

"More like...I couldn't really...if I'd found someone I really fell for hard and it was a guy, that might have been different, but I...can't get that far into the emotion with a guy--without thinking of you. Too much. With women there was still an association, but not as much of one." 

There was quiet between them for a time. 

Stephen broke it with "You're thinking 'I'm sorry' over there, aren't you." 

"Come on, how can I not, when you say things like that?" 

"Jim, I know you're sorry. You don't have to rip the skin off your back with a flail for me to believe it." 

"I know you believe it, at least partly, but I also know that there's a badly hurt twenty-one-year-old in there who would like nothing better than to throw my ass off a high-rise balcony, and I can't blame him." 

"We talked about this weeks ago, Jim. It's just going to take time, all right?" 

"And shrinkage." 

"Considerable shrinkage." 

"Stevie...are you still afraid I'll leave you again?" 

Stephen sighed. "You only found out I was afraid of that a week ago; don't put me in the position of having to lie about it for however long it takes." 

"I don't want you to lie about it, I just--" 

"Can we change the subject?" 

Now Jim sighed. "Sure." 

* * *

"More of Blair's garlic potatoes?" 

"I'm stuffed." Jim leaned back against the bedroll behind him and sighed. They were in front of the canopy that lifted out over the door of the tent, which, though the skies were clear, they'd set up because Jim had detected the makings of a heavily dew-soaked morning in the night air. The fire burned, small and hot and bright, in the cleared space of ground they'd set up just outside the raised canvas flap. 

Stephen, since Jim had cooked, was straightening up the campsite, taking the dishes to wash in the stream with natural, all-purpose soap. When he came back and started returning the various utensils to their customary storage, Jim ventured "Stephen...you remember that spring-frame hammock we used to use on camping trips up here?" 

"Dad's? Yeah." He paused as he was zipping a pack shut, still looking down at what he was doing, and smiled. "Yeah," he said again, more softly. 

Jim saw the smile and felt a sweet warmth in his solar plexus. "Whatever happened to that thing?" 

"I guess it's probably at home in the attic. Though I wouldn't recommend trying to use it by this time." He finished what he was doing and turned to rummage in the battery-powered electric cooler. "Beer?" 

"Thanks." Jim accepted a can. 

"What brings up the hammock?" 

"I was just thinking...this dream I had the other night. You and me, one time when we slept in it together." 

Stephen smiled but didn't reply, devoting his attention to sticking a marshmallow on the end of a stick and holding it at just the right altitude over the fire. 

"It was so real. In the dream, I was waking up, and I thought I _was_ waking up. And there we were." 

"Is that good?" 

Jim turned his head against the softness of the bedroll and smiled at Stephen's raised eyebrow. "Yeah. Good. How can you stand those things?" He gestured with his head to the marshmallow. 

Still smiling at Jim's answer, Stephen said "My sweet tooth never died. I don't have easily-overwhelmed sentinel tastebuds, remember." 

"Stevie, I never did like half-melted spun sugar, it's got nothing to do with my senses." 

Stephen pulled the gooey item from the stick, leaving some of its innards behind, and popped it in his mouth. "Don't know what you're missing," he said indistinctly, and washed the sticky mass down with a swallow of beer. 

"Bleah," Jim said, with a goodnatured grimace at the sight. 

"Don't watch if you don't like it," Stephen grinned, spearing another marshmallow on the remains of the last one. "Jim, tell me something." 

"Yeah?" 

"If you wanted to get away and clear your head, why did you bring along the one thing you probably need most urgently to get clear about?" 

Jim's beer fizzed in his throat. He managed to swallow, then bought himself a few seconds by coughing. Stephen waited, rotating the stick to sear his marshmallow evenly. 

"I guess you're talking about you?" Jim finally asked. 

"I'm not talking about your lucky fishing hat." 

"I never said it was you I needed to clear my head about." 

"Jim, hell, do you always have to do this?" 

Jim was quiet a moment, then said "Blair told me something." 

"Ah," Stephen said with an exaggerated nod. "I should've known. What did Blair the insight king say?" 

"After the dream I mentioned, he told me that we...that Stevie and Jimmy have some things to...he said they were still trying to get back to each other, and that's why we feel like--something isn't complete. Like we _haven't_ made it back to each other. He said that if I had come home to you like I said I would, things would have gone a certain way--he doesn't know what way, exactly--but if we...if we tried to find those feelings again, the ones we had for each other--rather, the ones you had, and the ones I'd have had if I hadn't buried them--before you called me that day..." He paused, thinking. Stephen waited. 

Jim finally finished "He thinks we'll know it when we find it. He says we should let what would have happened, happen." 

"But he doesn't know what would have happened." 

"No." 

"Jim...that's why you wanted us to come up here, then." 

Jim nodded. "Blair says my visions can be important. If that dream wasn't one, I don't know what qualifies." 

"Too bad the hammock's decrepit," Stephen noted, pulling his marshmallow from the stick and devouring it. (The marshmallow, not the stick.) 

"There's no way we could both fit in that thing now, anyway," Jim chuckled. "We've gained about thirty pounds each. Picture Laurel and Hardy trying to bed down in an upper berth." Stephen had an emergency swallow of beer to keep from spitting out his mouthful of goo when the mental picture of himself and Jim inflicting moderate to serious damage on each other in the process of trying to fit into the hammock made his diaphragm spasm. 

"Yeah, we were a couple of lean and wiry customers around that time, true," Stephen said when he could talk, impaling another marshmallow. 

"Our growth spurts hit us at about the same age, I think, between fourteen and fifteen, but mine was stretched out over a few years. Yours hit you like a runaway freight. I think there were about six months in there somewhere that we were the same height." 

"Still have the stretch marks along my lower back," Stephen said. "And actually, I was half an inch taller than you for exactly two and a half months when I topped out. Then you caught up and passed me again." 

"Those were the days. Eating everything that didn't get out of the way in time--and we'd never even _heard_ of cholesterol..." 

"Ransacking each other's closets to find one complete set of clothes that didn't leave our wrists and ankles hanging out..." 

"Cracking ourselves on the head whenever we tried to get into the car..." 

"Knocking things over because our arms were too long..." 

"Yeah, I had enough trouble with it. I don't know how you managed." 

"I wiped out a lot, as you may recall." 

"But it was a help on the crew, probably. And you were a terror on the wrestling mat." 

"They didn't get me into the correct weight division for a while when the spurt hit. I was basically beating the snot out of guys a division lower than me for about two months until the next official weigh-in." They were both laughing. 

"You never told me that!" 

"I didn't really think about it until the weigh-in, and I realized what'd been happening. I could've guessed when getting in bed with you became an exercise in topological mechanics." 

"Thank God Sally managed to convince Dad that we'd gotten way too big to still be sleeping in twin beds." 

"Well, she was right. One day I'm cuddled up to you sleeping like a baby, the next I can't keep the sheet tucked in or my arms and legs on the mattress even sleeping alone. You sure you don't want one of these?" 

"Very sure. But give me one that hasn't been cremated." 

"Suit yourself." Stephen passed him an untoasted marshmallow. Jim ripped a bite out of it and shlurked it around in his mouth, trying to dissolve the sugar without getting too much lodged in his teeth. 

"Jim, that is so fucking gross." 

"Don't watch if you don't like it," Jim quoted him with a smirk, and kept shlurking. 

"I can't believe you still do that." 

"You didn't have to wear braces for almost a year." 

"You got off easy, you know. Most kids who need those things are stuck in them 'til they graduate, or longer. And yours were that lightweight kind, you could hardly see them. You might've been stuck in a radiator grille with headgear." 

"Spoken like somebody whose permanent teeth came in completely straight." Jim ripped another bite out of the marshmallow, trying to tone down the shlurking this time. 

"So. Blair's insight," Stephen said. 

"Yeah?" 

"What...what exactly did you plan on, here? Did you have an idea where you were going with this when you asked me up here?" 

"Um." Jim stretched, popping the last of the marshmallow in his mouth, and scooted back, sitting up with his back to the bedroll. "No, I didn't. But it seemed prudent to pay attention to the dream, even if I didn't know exactly what the gremlins of the ether, or whoever the hell, are trying to tell me to do. Blair suggested a kind of go-with-the-flow approach. But he also said...that if this was going to work, I had to be the one to...to put myself on the line. Because..." 

"Because you shafted me and there's no way I'm going down that road again of my own volition? He underestimates me." 

"Not quite. He...thinks that wherever it comes from, however we get there, it won't be by listening to our conscious minds...and the deeper levels of _your_ mind are a hell of a lot more scarred by me than by anything else in your life except Dad." 

"He thinks my instincts, when it comes to you, are...in remission." 

"He thinks that as much as Stevie wants Jimmy back, Stevie still took it in the teeth from Jimmy in the worst way, and, not being a complete fool, Stevie's _not_ going to be the one to initiate whatever it is that needs to happen." 

"I wasn't going to put it that way..." 

"I just hope he knows what he's talking about." 

"He usually does." 

Jim sighed. "I know. I've blown him off so many times when he turned out to be right...and the fact that he _isn't_ ever smug about it only makes it worse. Sometimes I think I'm a little resentful of him for that." 

"Wouldn't be strange. Shit." Stephen's marshmallow was blazing merrily on the end of the green stick. 

Jim snorted. "Some people like 'em blackened. Like catfish or something." 

"Well I don't. Crispy and brown on the outside and warm and gooey inside, or I'll pass. Jesus." He was whapping the flaming marshmallow in the green grass outside the fire circle, but it was apparently determined to go out in a blaze of glory. "And this one would've been inedible even if I did like 'em black." Jim was cackling like a fiend at the spectacle of St. Stephen versus the Fire-Breathing Marshmallow. 

Critically examining the pathetic-looking little black rock that was the remains, Stephen cracked up, too. "Mmmm-boy, makes your mouth water." They went off in gales of laughter. "Let's bring it back to Blair and tell him we think it's a silicate-based meteorite." 

"Or a fossilized moose booger." 

Stephen made a grossed-out sound amidst the guffawing and threw the sticky little object at Jim. "You sick _fuck_." 

"Or a marshmallow dropping, from the days when thundering herds of marshmallows covered the land in great roaming continents of--hey!" Jim was rolled away from the bedroll by the solid impact of about a hundred and eighty pounds of Stephen. It wasn't much of a wrestling match, considering most of their air was still going toward laughter, and when Stephen resorted to tickling, Jim gave up. "I surrender, you cheating s.o.b.," he managed to hiccup from his position flat on his back with Stephen straddling him, holding him down by the shoulders. "Damn, kid, you've still got it. And I'm not even a weight division below you." They stayed that way, snickering, panting and waiting for the laughter to die down of its own accord. 

Stephen shifted a little where he was sitting on Jim, and it suddenly became a point of great interest to both of them just exactly what portion of Jim he was sitting on. Their panting slowly calmed as their eyes wandered over each other, until their gazes finally met again. 

"Um...Stephen?" Jim murmured, the question unvoiced but obvious. 

"Yeah," Stephen said softly, knowing that the soft light in Jim's eyes was answered in his own, and he moved up a little and leaned down closer. Jim reached up and slid his hand into the soft, glossy hair, gently guiding him down. 

Stephen's lips were as soft as he remembered, soft as they'd felt out on the balcony; they were sticky and sweet right now with melted sugar. Jim licked gently at them a few times, opening them, as Stephen adjusted himself so more of their bodies pressed together. Their tongues stroked each other a while, hesitant and tender, before Jim began to apply more pressure, more emphasis, and his other arm came up to wrap securely around Stephen's body. 

Taste and smell are very closely related, as anyone who's had a cold knows. Smell itself bypasses several routing stations and translation mechanisms in the brain that the other senses have to go through in reaching stored memories. Therefore, smell memories are some of the most vivid, and most likely to make one feel as though one is _in_ the memory for just an instant--to actually look around for a second, expecting to see the sights associated with the place one smelled the scent in the past. Stephen's scent had been triggering sudden memories for quite a while; that was nothing new. 

But adding taste was making a considerable difference. Under the grilled fish and potatoes and beer and overlying sweetness of sugar, Stephen still tasted the same. Jim heard himself moan softly, wrapping his arm more tightly around Stephen's neck, the other around the small of his back. Stephen's hands slid around to support Jim's head and keep his neck from straining as their kisses escalated. 

Jim was so lost in sensation, memory and rising emotion that for a moment he didn't understand what was happening when Stephen pulled away, his head lifting, still wrapped close with him. Jim blinked in confusion, his breath coming in soft gasps. "Stevie...?" 

"Uh, Jim? Bear." 

"Huh?" 

"Brown bear. Sitting about twenty yards away, where the thicker trees start. Watching us. On the small side, a couple of years old, maybe." 

With considerable effort, Jim brought himself out of the complex multi-sense version of a pseudo-zone he'd been in on Stephen. "Uh. Doing anything?" 

"Nah, just sitting. Probably heading for the stream when it noticed the camp. Maybe smelled the fish." 

"Then we can probably sit up without spooking it." 

"I'd say so. It looks bored." 

"If it smelled fish and came to check it out, it's probably disappointed the smell's mostly gone." Slowly, they began to untangle themselves. 

"He can't smell the rest of the food, can he?" 

"No, we sealed it all up tight. If I can't smell it, the bear can't either." Jim managed to get turned around. Sure enough, there the bear sat, leaning on a tree, back paws stuck out in front of him. He scratched his belly, reminding Jim vaguely of Al Bundy. "Must be a slow night in Bearsville." 

"I bet he wonders what the hell we were doing." 

"Nah, he's probably wondering if he'll get a handout if he sticks around." 

"Just as a double-check, you've got your gun, right?" 

"Moved it to the ankle holster." 

"Yeah. Well, we won't need it. Doesn't look like he's up to rumble." 

"I bet he's going to wait until we go to sleep, then try to get into the food. He's obviously used to campers. It doesn't take long for most animals to figure out what kind of containers we keep food in." 

"Dude. Come on," Stephen sighed, talking to the bear. "Head for the stream and catch yourself some fish." 

The bear made a small (for a bear) hornking sound and fell over on his side, getting comfortable. 

"Well, that's that. We're sharing our campsite with him, looks like." 

Jim chuckled. "He looks well-fed, it's summer; and like I said, the way he's acting, he's used to humans. The only thing he might do that's any kind of problem is try to drag the coolers off to break open. If that happens I'll fire a round into the air. He'll leave." 

"How about if we just give him something?" 

"Sometimes that works. Sometimes they won't leave if you give them anything, though, and the longer they hang around the greater the chance of something unfortunate happening to someone, either us or the bear, or both. Besides, we don't want to attract any more big critters with long claws by having him chowing right here." 

"I went camping with Uncle Gene one summer, and he fed a full-grown black bear. It left after it ate." 

"What'd he feed it?" 

"Slab of raw bacon and half a jar of strawberry preserves." 

"Uncle Gene always was an act-first-think-later kind of guy." 

"Funny thing. The bear kept the jar." 

"What?" 

"The bear uncle Gene fed. It ate all the preserves and picked the jar up in its teeth before it left." 

"Huh. Wonder what it wanted with it." 

"Beats me. Maybe it was going to trade it to a raccoon for berry rights or something. Raccoons like shiny things that go 'clink' when you tap them. Oh, hell." 

"What?" 

"I rolled on the moose booger. It's stuck to my shirt...stop laughing and get the damn thing off, will you?" 

* * *

The canvas sides of the tent were rolled up, leaving the interior walled only by the fine bugproof netting. Jim was lying comfortably, arms folded behind his head on the stack of pillow and jacket that propped him up, ankles crossed, using his sight to focus beyond the netting and let his eyes rest on the moon-and-starlit wilderness around them. 

Well, wilderness might be going too far. Their friend the bear was obviously familiar enough with human presence to take theirs lightly. He'd already investigated the various secured packs and supplies; he could have ripped some of them open, but apparently he wasn't hungry or curious enough to go to that much effort. In fact, if he were hungry at all, there was enough normal bear food around to stuff himself to the gills on. 

Instead, the bear had curled up next to the bed of softly glowing coals that were the subsided remains of the fire, and gone to sleep, which was rather strange. It wasn't as though he'd be cold, and even if he was, wild animals do _not_ care for fire. 

This guy sure was relaxed, though. Jim wondered if he might be partly domesticated, like animals in heavily frequented state parks. Some bears there would walk right up to your car and take the food out of your hands through the open window, unconcerned about such technicalities as whether you'd actually offered it to them or not. They were also almost impossible to piss off, because they knew any minor irritation they had to put up with was worth it for the free chow. But if that were the case here, this guy'd likely have come right up to Stephen and Jim rather than waiting for them to bed down before he made his raid. No, he just had the bear equivalent of the munchies. He wasn't hungry, per se; he was hoping for a figurative sack of Corn Nuts. 

Jim let his eyes drift shut for a few moments. Unsurprisingly, the first thing he became aware of was Stephen. His scent, of course...seemed he was constantly aware of that scent on some level when Stevie was nearby. It was more familiar than his own smell--even for a sentinel, one's own scent (unless one had had time to get thoroughly ripe) was usually impossible to isolate, due to olfactory cut-out; the chemical receptors tuned out a constant low-level smell like that. But Stephen's was deeply familiar, from as far back as he could remember; and similar to his own, without being identical. 

Heat. If he concentrated, he could feel the heat from Stephen's body. That shouldn't feel any different from detecting anyone else's, but it did. It was more as if Stephen's body was an extension of his, and the warmth he felt like the heat from his hand against his own face...yet it wasn't. It was his brother. 

_His_. Brother. 

He could hear Stephen's soft breath. It sounded different, now, a subtle depth to it, audible to sentinel ears, that hadn't been there when Stephen was a child or a teenager; there was more to the sound, now, but it was the same sound. Still Stephen. His heart beat more slowly now, of course; the soft thumping with the muted catch he'd grown used to--Stephen hadn't been born with the syndrome in which certain openings between the chambers of the heart, normal in a developing fetus, fail to close before birth and require surgery to seal them, but he'd come close. One of the chambers had closed late in his development, and the murmur caused by the very slightly irregular shape of the chamber had caused considerable alarm before it was determined that the sound was benign. 

Jim remembered thinking, as they left the pediatric floor of the hospital, "I could have told them that." 

He turned over on his side, eyes still closed. Stephen was exactly three feet away from him. He was asleep, but not deeply so. He made a sighing sound, sentinel-soft. His heartbeat was increasing very slowly, not quickly enough to indicate alarm, just waking up. Maybe he was dreaming something nice. 

Jim's long arms, the heavy muscles warm and relaxed now, suddenly drew up against his ribs, wrapping around him. He remembered that warm weight lying against him, decades ago, when the difference in their sizes was still considerable. When their mother left, Stevie was still too little to reliably make his way to Jimmy's room; but he liked Jimmy's bed better, slept better, didn't cry as much; so Jimmy would go get him and bring him back, making a game out of their having to keep _absolutely quiet_. 

He remembered cuddling the small warm body against himself, smelling that smell, feeling the idiosyncratic little heartbeat against the palm of his hand, the sweet-smelling breath warmly rushing against his throat. 

He'd wanted to KILL whatever was hurting Stevie so bad that he cried himself to sleep at night. 

The fact that Jimmy himself had all the same problems, and cried at night just as often when Stevie wasn't with him, didn't even occur to him at the time. 

Sally, their partner in crime for the first years, would check Jimmy's bed for Stevie's possible presence every morning when she arrived, and return him to bed before their father got up on the occasions she found him there, without waking either boy. She wasn't there every single day, of course; she had days off and very occasional periods of illness, among other rare disturbances in the routine, and Jim knew (because Stephen had told him) that their father _had_ happened upon them several times in Jimmy's bed when they were younger. Since the elder Ellison had no notion of how often it occurred (his blithe assumption was that the boys had stayed up playing or talking well after their light's-out time and fallen asleep; boys will be boys) he'd simply returned Stevie to his own bed and issued a stern warning at breakfast about observing light's-out time, and possible penalties for not so observing; _James, any explanation_? Jimmy had admitted to keeping his little brother up. He also stoically took the corporal punishment meted out when their father found them again three weeks later. _I warned you, James._ (He was always James when he was in trouble.) _You're making things harder for your little brother, too, you realize. Do you want to be responsible for that?_

Jim hadn't remembered that part. Stephen had. They'd been far more careful afterward. Not to say there still weren't close calls, and the rare call that was worse than close and necessitated _extremely_ fast thinking. 

'Bastard,' Jim thought. 'He had no right to keep us apart.' 

Only a few months ago--less, more likely--a thought like that would have sent Jim so deep into denial they'd have had to messenger daylight to him. But at this point, he didn't even twitch. 

Stevie. Stephen. 'Two years and nine months. It wasn't a lot of difference, but it was more then than it is now. It's _nothing_ now. Nothing...Stephen...the age difference is nothing. But everything else... 

'Nothing like me, nothing...so different. Gentle, open...the worst thing that ever hurt you, scarred you, made you bury your soul to keep it intact was _me_ , and Dad. Nothing like the things that...nothing like me...but...' 

Jim struggled ineffectually, finally opening his eyes to fasten on the explosion of red-gold-brown that was currently all that was visible of his brother. He couldn't describe it. It was something he _knew_ , down so deep, from so far back in his mind, he couldn't hope to name it. Stephen was his. Not his belonging, not his possession--he was Stephen's in the same way. They _were_ each other. Part of each other, inside. Something basic, physical, gut-level, instinctive. It wasn't simply a romantic way of speaking. This was so solidly _real_ Jim could almost touch it. 

Maybe it was because he was a sentinel, and couldn't help being so aware of Stephen. Couldn't help the feelings coming back to him, love and comfort and contentment, that all the sights and smells and textures and tastes and sounds of Stephen brought back to him now. Now that he could let them come back. 

Yeah, he felt buried. He couldn't deal with something like this, he had no referents for it, and part of him was scared into witless gibbering, but at least he wasn't alone. Blair loved him no _matter_ what; he wanted to help. And Stephen had said yes, when Jim came to him wanting him back, _really_ back. 

But God, what Blair had said he'd have to do was an awesome notion. After some of the things he'd done--terrifying things, complex, half-hopeless things against impossible odds--one might think it wouldn't be such a tall order. But anybody who thought that couldn't possibly know shit about Jim Ellison. 

Stephen stirred next to him. Jim smiled and unfolded his arms, letting one hand wander over to smooth at his brother's hair as the younger man turned over in his bedroll, muttering "He still out there?" 

"Yeah. He's crashed by the fire." 

"Y'know," Stephen yawned, unconsciously kind of fawning on Jim's stroking hand with his head, encouraging the attention, "that kind of persistence really deserves a reward. If he's still around when we go, let's leave him something." 

"If he's still around when we go, I'm going to suspect him of being on furlough from the zoo, looking to hitch a ride back to town." 

"Are you going to stay awake as long as he's out there? I don't think he's much of a threat. You can stop being Mr. Sentinel." 

Jim batted Stephen's head very gently. "I'm just enjoying the evening. Blair and I haven't been able to get out this far in a while." 

"What about taking one of your famous solo trips? That's why I was suspicious of your asking me up here. If Blair couldn't go, you could have come alone--and then you told me you'd asked Simon for the time off. You never do that unless something specific is up." 

"You know me too well." 

Stephen apparently decided he was going to be awake for a while anyway, and stretched hugely, then shoved the soft, thick folds of his bedroll down a little so he could sit up (one does not need the high-tech lightweight forty-below-proof type gear to camp in a pastoral Washington state clearing in the middle of summer, and Stephen liked his beds cushy). 

Jim could only lie there looking at him--rumpled, unshaven, hair a shiny touseled mess, with exactly the same expression, cast to his features, and posture he'd had in his mid-teens when first awakened, especially in the middle of the night. Which was the same as he'd had when he was three. Jim wanted to scoop him up into his own bedroll and squeeze his stuffings out. Too bad he was too damn big. 

Stephen blinked blearily at him. "What are you smiling at?" he said, though his tone of voice and the smile that was obviously threatening on the horizon of his own face made it obvious he knew what Jim was smiling at. 

"You can see me smiling?" Jim wondered. Far away from city lights to reflect on suspended particles and moisture in the air, with the moon at crescent and the trees blocking large portions of what star- and moonlight there was, the night was dark. 

"The eyes of us mere mortals dark-adapt too, you know," Stephen pointed out. 

"Forgive me. Sometimes I get above myself." 

"If you feel like getting above something, I--" Stephen stopped, gulped, and said "Whoa." 

"I know," Jim whispered. "I keep catching myself, too." 

"Your dream was right," Stephen said, forcing a low laugh. "There must be something...something about this place. Maybe the ghosts of Jimmy and Stevie are haunting it." 

"Maybe. But I think Jimmy and Stevie are still alive, since it seems that neither of us can really get away from them." 

Stephen said softly "It feels more like it's you I can't get away from. Not that I'm trying," he added hastily. "It's just that--some part of Jimmy is in _here_." He tapped his own breastbone with a fingertip through the soft flannel shirt he wore. "Yeah, Stevie's still in my head. But Jimmy's still..." 

Jim reached over and took the hand that still rested near Stephen's heart. Stephen enlaced his finger's with Jim's easily, still blinking in the aftermath of sleep, rubbing Jim's palm with his thumb as he thought. "Can I ask you something? Hell, if I can't, we might as well give up right here--has Blair ever specifically said that he doesn't mind if you and I end up...end up like we were out there, when I spotted the bear?" 

Jim was quiet a minute, then he sighed and turned over on his back again, though he didn't let go of Stephen's hand. "No, not specifically. But it's come up more than once when we talk about this thing with you and me, and he always sounds as though it's...if not a given, then it's a given that _if_ it's part of what needs to happen, he does think it's a given, if you follow me." 

"Jim, I just woke up." 

"Well, to paraphrase, he said 'Follow your instincts and find out just what all needs to happen with you and Stephen. Then you can decide if you're willing to do it, and how far you're willing to take it. It may involve sex and it may not.'" 

"Actually, that sounds a little ambiguous in terms of whether he's okay with it." 

"I can't say it the way he does. If you'd been there, you'd know what I mean. Also, he saw us kissing on the balcony, and he didn't bat an eyelash." 

Stephen thought. "He did tell me that what he wanted--'of course'--was what was best for you, whatever that was, but he didn't pretend even for a second that he was the one who could figure that out. And he said he wanted us to have each other back, in a big way, because he never had a brother and he didn't want _us_ to lose each other. I guess it's possible that he thinks outright permission might sound like an injunction to go, uh, get busy with me, and he doesn't want you doing what he tells you. He wants you to do what...feels right. What seems like it's what needs to be done." 

"Am I that bad?" Jim sighed. "Do I want that much to be told what to do in...situations involving the human factor?" 

"Yes," Stephen said, with a sad half-smile over at him. "But I don't know, Jim. Maybe Blair's off on this one." 

"How do you mean?" 

"Your...everything that's happened to you--Dad, the army, Peru, life as a cop, name it--has made it almost impossible for you to be...unafraid. To be casually open, like Blair and I are with each other. Remember when you said you were jealous of the two of us together? And I tried to explain what it was you were jealous of?" 

Jim nodded shortly. 

"There's a level of simple personal openness that you just can't seem to attain, with _anybody_ , except maybe for very brief moments. Even with _Blair_ , Jim. Like I said, of course you're intimate with him, but it's...it's not relaxed, casual, something you take for granted. It's a big deal to someone like you, and there's still a...a structure to it, if you see what I mean." 

"And it's not a big deal to people like you and Blair?" 

"It can be, of course. But..." 

"Something tells me I'm about to hear about my fear-based responses again." 

"Jim, you're a sentinel. A _sentinel_. And a cop, and a guy who's been through several different kinds of sheer hell. If you _weren't_ habitually guarded, if it _were_ easy--or even possible--for you to be open the way I'm talking about, you'd be either a fool or too idealistic to survive." 

"And you say Blair is off because...?" 

"I said he might be. Because he told you it was in your court. He's right in a way, I understand why he said that. It's just...between your being behind fortress walls in general, and my having a specific problem getting that...that openness with you in particular--because as long as you can't do it, I can't either; he's right that I can't be the one to come out from behind the walls first--I don't know if there's any way through this. Because that's asking so much of you, when--hell. I think he wants us to get back something we used to have--when you were young, and all you had to deal with was Dad and the lack of Mom. You could still do it then. You and I _had_ it then. I think that's what he means. I'm not sure if you're up to that, at least yet." 

Jim was quiet for a while. Stephen readjusted himself a little so their clasped hands wouldn't be uncomfortable as he lay back down. The bear hornked softly. 

"Should I be insulted?" Jim wondered. 

"I didn't mean to be insulting," Stephen said thoughtfully, "so keep that in mind while you're deciding. You are who you are. I don't have a problem with that and neither does Blair; we both love you. But like anybody else, you've got things you'd almost rather die than do, and this is one of those things." 

"It isn't that I'd rather not, it's that I don't know _how_." 

"You remember, though. You remembered well enough that the dream you had seemed real to you, like you were back here with me." 

Jim was quiet a minute. "Maybe we've been wrong. Maybe I _do_ need to...regress, or whatever we've been calling it." 

Stephen shook his head a little. "No, Jimmy already knows what I mean, he already has it. It's Jim who needs to get it. I know you and Jimmy are the same guy. But the guy you were then has been through a _shitload_ now, and for _you_ to really have it, it has to be you who gets it, not him. If you see what I mean." 

"If this is what seeing a psychologist for years does to a person, I'm glad I never went." 

"I rest my case." Stephen pulled Jim's hand in, kissed it, let it go, and turned back over, burrowing down into his bedroll again. 

"Stephen?" 

"Mm-hm." 

"The bear's taking a dump by the fire circle." 

"Oh _hell_." Stephen pulled the covers over his head. 

* * *

Jim approached the flickering, bluish light through the dimness between the trees. Blue hung in the air--late-evening, stormcloud blue. He emerged into the clearing to see Blair sitting in front of a small fire near the tent. Next to him sat a brown bear with blue eyes. Blair was wearing jeans, hiking boots, and no shirt; something gleamed, shiny and slick, over his shoulders as he rotated a stick over the fire, toasting a marshmallow. His hair was in a ponytail, but tied higher up toward the crown of his head to keep his hair off the clear stuff that covered his back. 

"Bears aren't carnivores, you know," Blair said, pulling the marshmallow off the stick and offering it to the Bear. "They're omnivorous, like us. Actually, most of what they survive on is vegetable. They fish, but they only scavenge red meat; they don't hunt it. Though if live red meat gets in their faces enough they're not averse to killing it." The Bear was managing to consume the sticky morsel fairly expeditiously. "They don't chew, they snap," Blair explained. "Like cats and wolves. If he gets something that sticky too involved with his teeth he'll be all day getting it down." 

"Then why are they called carnivores so often?" Jim wondered, sitting down on the other side of the fire as Blair speared another marshmallow and held it over the flames. The Bear was drinking from a bucket of water Blair had apparently thoughtfully placed to his other side for him. 

"Because they have carnivore teeth and carnivore digestive tracts--very short. Meat is extremely concentrated nutrition and doesn't need a long digestive tract to leech it for all it's worth. Plus it's got no bulk; a long tract would result in perpetual constipation. Humans, on the other hand, have herbivore teeth and herbivore digestive tracts--long and designed for a primarily vegetable diet. Doesn't really matter, though, we're both omnivores. Though if you want to get right down and be literal about it, so are cats and wolves. We'll all eat what we can get if we're hungry enough." He held the stick out toward the Bear, who accepted the second marshmallow. 

"Blair," Jim said hesitantly, "I know you said I have to be the one to convince Stephen--sue to get him back, or something, you said--but what if I can't convince him?" 

"He _wants_ you back, Jim. He's trying, too. You can tell what he means about occasions when you've both managed to drop the routine and really _see_ each other for a few moments." 

"I know, but...I'm not used to this. I've never had to convince anyone else it was...safe to come out, before. If anything, people have only tried to do that with me." 

"Well, my being one of the few success stories there, when in doubt...ask yourself what _I'd_ do. Stephen and I have a nice rapport." 

"That's because you're you. I can't be you," Jim murmured sorrowfully. 

"You don't have to _be_ me." 

"When we touch, it seems to happen," Jim offered. "Or at least it starts to." 

"There's an intimacy in that, all right," Blair conceded, "and it might be an important part of getting back what you had, but it can't be an end in itself. It's not the whole answer. You know as well as I do it's easy to have sex with a lot of barriers firmly in place." 

"Yeah," Jim sighed. 

"Think about this. He asked you once to just be with him around Dana the same way you were with him when the two of you were alone. Go that one better; when you're alone with Stephen, be with him the same way you are when you're alone with yourself...but let him see it. Not just with things that directly concern him--with everything, or as much of everything as is reasonably practical. Do you follow me?" 

"I'm trying," Jim said sincerely. 

"You've already got the basic idea. _Doing_ it is the kicker." 

Jim nodded thoughtfully, and a football thumped him in the side of the head. There was a snicker off to his right. He looked over. His brother was standing on the outskirts of the firelight. 

"You're supposed to say 'heads up', scumbutt," he complained at Stevie as he picked up the football. His voice sounded strange, lacking its deepest resonance. 

"Want me to go long?" Blair wondered, with a big grin on his face. Jimmy tossed the ball to his guide, in a high arc over the small fire, and started grinning himself--Stevie had smacked into his back and was trying to get him in a half-nelson. "No way, kid--" he saw Blair catch the ball just as a gale of laughter broke from his own throat when Stevie gently bit the side of his neck with a growling sound. 

Blair turned and handed the ball to the Bear, who took it gravely, in both front paws, with a soft hornk. 

"Stevie--!" Jim laughed, squirming. 

"Love you, Jimmy," Stevie whispered hotly, sliding a hand under Jimmy's shirt. 

* * *

"Stephen?" The rising light had woken Jim; he blinked and glanced around. The younger Ellison wasn't in the tent. Jim listened a moment; Stephen was on his way back--fast. Jim sat up in alarm, reaching for his gun, but the reason for Stephen's burst of speed became apparent when he dove through the flap in his shorts, hair still wet and body little dryer, and flung various toiletry items onto the canvas floor before diving almost inside his duffel for clothes. "Fucking FREEZING my ASS off only part about camping I really HATE--" 

Jim watched, amused, as Stephen hastily pulled on a pair of old, faded jeans and a blue flannel shirt, leaving it hanging open as he grabbed his towel again to start scrubbing at his hair with it. Jim, his eyes taking in the smooth, tanned, powerful chest thus displayed, pointed out "You could buy yourself one of those gigantic Airstreams, the kind that have showers." 

"Jim, that's not camping. That's an efficiency apartment on a truck cab. If I were interested in that I'd just pitch a tent in my backyard." He pulled the towel off his head. Jim cracked up. 

"You just wish you _had_ my hair," Stephen grumped, starting to give his collection of personal hygiene products some kind of order in the pack he'd gotten them out of. He'd shaved already, too. "Or anybody's, for that matter." 

"That's it, kick me where it hurts." 

"You laughed at my frozen carcass first thing in the morning, so tough shit." 

"I wasn't laughing _at_ you. I was laughing because you looked adorable." 

Stephen glanced over his shoulder. Jim was sitting with his knees bent and his arms folded on them, one hand raised to rest his head on as he gazed at his brother, half-smiling. "And, uh, more cut than the last time I saw you in your underwear. Have you been stepping up your workouts?" 

"Um, yeah, actually," Stephen managed through his somewhat flustered smile, turning back to his organizing efforts. "When we changed into our tuxes in the men's lounge at the mayor's Christmas ball, well...let's just say you were something of an inspiration." 

"Thanks. I'm glad you approve. Stephen, you shouldn't have been out there alone with me back here asleep and that bear wandering around here. Did you see him, by the way?" 

"Yeah. I headed out to the stream, and there he was, fishing. I froze; he looked at me, then turned around and headed upstream about fifty yards or so and went back to what he was doing. I figured if he didn't have a problem there was no reason for me to, so I just went ahead and got clean. He was still there when I left." 

"You know better than that. He's a wild animal. Their behavior can be completely unpredictable." 

"I know. But he just didn't worry me." 

"Well, put my mind at ease and don't go roaming around without telling me, okay? I hate to think of having to explain to Dad that I let you get eaten by a bear." 

"Dad hell. Think of explaining it to Blair." 

"That doesn't bear thinking about." 

Stephen nailed him in the head with the wet towel. Jim struggled under it. "Hey! What's that for?" 

"...doesn't _bear_ thinking about?" 

Jim pulled the towel off and blinked, then smacked his forehead with his palm. "I hate when that happens." 

"Are you telling me you didn't do that on purpose?" 

"No, I didn't. Blair's the one who intentionally makes jokes that would cause a jury to accept the self-defense plea if you murdered him as a result. By the way, about our, um, bear refuse problem..." 

"It's been dealt with." 

"How--" 

"I don't want to talk about it." 

"I hear _that_." 

"C'mon, the sun'll be coming up soon. Get a move on or we'll miss the best fishing time." Stephen started combing his hair. "Want to hike up to the top of the ridge later? I remember the view was incredible." 

"Sure." Jim started fooling with his own personals pack. "And as soon as I get done here, I was hoping we might catch the sunrise at that spot farther out on the promontory." 

Stephen smiled. "That'd be great," he said. "But twenty years is enough time for squatty little baby pine trees to become large, studly pine trees that don't look a damn thing like what they used to, and cover up a good bit of the landscape. Do you think we can find it?" 

"Hey, I'm a sentinel, remember? If I can't find it, it can't be found." 

* * *

Around them the forest was dim green and cool, mist floating over the mossy ground, soft birdsong sounding from the canopy overhead. 

"You know, I hate that you can do that." 

"Do what?" Jim pushed a piney branch out of their way, holding it for Stephen as the younger man caught up. 

"Dial down your sense of touch so you don't freeze bathing in that cold water. It's unfair." 

"It took me a long time to figure out how to dial down _only_ the relevant neurons--the ones that detect temperature. Otherwise I'd be numb all over, like a body full of lidocaine. Blair about shit blue with joy when I told him I could do it." 

"Jim...if Blair's right and having sentinel abilities is genetic, why didn't I get them?" 

"Usual reason, I guess. You didn't get Dad's teeth, either. Or maybe you do have the gene for the abilities, but it's recessive. Canceled by a dominant gene." 

"I know what 'recessive' means, Jim. So that I might have a sentinel kid, but I'm not one myself," Stephen pondered. 

"Neither is Dad." 

"Or Mom, as far as we know. But your abilities aren't absolutely consistent. They can come and go, at least--from what you've told me--partially in response to your attitude about them, among other things." 

"Partially, yeah. But Stevie, there's no need to be jealous. Being a sentinel is _not_ a picnic a lot of the time." 

"I'm not jealous. Hell, I'm not sure I could handle something like that without cracking up completely. And you did tell me about the ear wax experience and sundry other miseries you've gone through, like not being able to reveal things you know because you can't reveal how you know them--especially for a cop, that would have to be a major pisser. It was bad enough when we were little, God knows." 

"Yeah," Jim murmured, as they both thought of Bud; neither of them voiced the thought. It wasn't necessary. 

"Anyway, what I was getting around to was that since they aren't necessarily always...always on, if that's the word, maybe Dad or I just haven't manifested them yet." 

Jim shook his head, scanning the landscape, comparing it with the pictures in his memory. "I don't know. The first time he saw you, Blair mentioned the possibility that you might be a sentinel, too. But he also says that even when the abilities remiss, like they did with me, and it takes something pretty major to shock them back out, they've usually already manifested in childhood. You know--" he paused and turned around. Stephen, climbing the little fall of earth behind him, bumped into him. Jim caught him and steadied him. "Sorry." 

"S'okay. 'I know' what?" 

Jim didn't release the gentle grip he had on Stephen's shoulder and waist. "I'd wonder every now and then if you really believed me-- _kept_ believing me. I know you believed it when you were little, but since the abilities vanished as mysteriously as they showed up..." 

Stephen shook his head in puzzlement. "Like I've said, I _saw_ what you could do. I was _there_. And I saw the things that happened to you when you couldn't control it. I may have been young, but I know I didn't imagine any of it. Yeah, I always believed you. Jim..." Stephen shook his head slightly again, a bemused smile lifting one corner of his mouth. "I just always believed you. Always." 

Jim knew Stephen wasn't just talking about Jim's senses, and he smiled back. "I know. We always did...but I...I'd wonder occasionally what things must look like from where you were." 

"Not nearly as interesting as from where you are," Stephen pointed out. 

"Have you thought a lot about whether you might be a sentinel?" Jim wondered, making himself let go and turning to proceed. 

"No, actually. Didn't even occur to me until Blair mentioned it to me a while back," Stephen said, dismissing the subject with a wave of his hand. "Are we getting close?" 

"I think so--hey, yeah!" Jim had stopped suddenly, grabbing a handy branch to keep from falling into the small freshet that had suddenly appeared beneath his feet, disappearing again under an overhanging slab of rock to the south. "Here's that little creek." 

Stephen came up to where Jim had been standing as the former took a long step across onto the opposite bank, and said "I think it's wider. Looks like a little more bank's been washed away." 

"Not much, though. The bed's mostly rock. Here." He held out his hand to the slightly shorter Stephen. "Can you see all right?" 

"Jim, I can see just fine. I think you're letting the Sentinel thing go to your head." 

"I am not. Blair would be bitching to the heavens right now about having to climb around in the dark." 

Stephen reached out and took Jim's hand, making the short jump. He came up hard against Jim, bumping them both backward into a tree. "We've got to stop meeting like this." 

Jim cracked up. "Why? I...I kind of like it." 

"Well. Me too. But I'd like to think we could manage to be affectionate without having first crashed into each other," Stephen smiled, getting his weight back on his own feet as Jim let go. "That could get old. Which way...it was up this way, wasn't it?" 

"Yeah." 

They emerged from the heavier growth to find that the clearing they remembered didn't quite exist any more, at least not in the form they were familiar with. As Stephen had mentioned, many fast-growing species of fir tree could go from seedling to maturity in the space of twenty years. 

Plus there had been an invasion of blackberry bushes somewhere during that time. "Ouch," Stephen muttered. 

"You okay?" 

"Fine, just stuck. You go on and find the edge. Just be careful not to fall off." 

"Keeping my eyes peeled...I'm there. Come this way. Follow my voice." Stephen finished freeing himself from the entrapping branches and followed. 

He came up against Jim as he swung around the bole of a pin oak and pushed through some tall shrubs, but didn't crash into him this time; Jim already had a hand out to steady him. "Watch it. There's not a lot of room." 

"Shit, you can say that again." Jim was standing on a ledge that overlooked the fairly sheer drop down into the valley to the east. His arm went around Stephen's waist as the younger man rubbed his eyes, gazing out. "We're just in time, it looks like." Stephen raised his near hand to Jim's shoulder, letting him accept a little of his weight. 

The sky was a dozen shades of rose and gold. Farther up toward the zenith, the warm colors shaded first to a pale yellow-green, then finally to deep blue. The gold was starting to reflect off the heavy mist that still filled the valley, bringing out more varied colors in the green bowl of cloud. Both men were quiet, listening to the breeze that hugged the sides of the mountain. A flock of chickadees flew past almost on a level with them, about forty yards out, chittering musically, heading south. 

They both saw the brilliant Green Flash as the sun finally broke, round and heavy and red, almost dim enough to look straight at. The small clouds became flooded with light, and the mist in the valley turned from gold to white. Stephen gasped softly, and Jim reflexively pulled him closer. 

As it cleared the ridge, the sun turned brilliant, a point of unbearable brightness instead of a visibly round star. Its warmth fell across them as it rose higher, and the rose and gold and green vanished in a wash of sunlit azure. 

"Jim." 

"Yeah." 

"Kiss me." 

Jim met his eyes, turning, sliding his other arm around the slim, powerful body, tilting his head to meet Stephen's motion. Stephen's arm came up around his brother's neck, wrapping tight, as their mouths met; opening, stroking, tongues sliding surely together. 

Eventually, Jim managed to get a handle on the fact that if they kept getting more and more involved in what they were doing like this, they could wind up falling off the cliff. With a monumental effort, he forced himself to break their current kiss, pulling Stephen against him tight. "God, Stevie..." he gulped and shivered, trying to control his deep panting breaths. "I love you, so much..." Jesus, he was so hard. And so was Stephen. 

"Love you too, Jim," Stephen murmured against Jim's neck, and Jim could feel the warm, salty dampness wetting his skin. 

"Are you crying?" he whispered. 

"Don't mind me," Stephen whispered back; Jim could feel the smile that curved the still-so-silken-textured lips. "I'm having an epiphany. Oh, Jim...God. I missed you, Jimmy..." 

Jim felt his own eyes prickling dangerously, and a drop of wet heat rolled down his cheek. "I won't leave you this time. I won't leave again. I'm coming back, Stevie...it just...it's taking a little longer than I expected, that's all." 

Stephen nodded. 

* * *

"Because he'd have a heart attack, that's why, and there's probably some annoying clause in the insurance policy that keeps the beneficiaries from collecting if they murder the insured party." 

"He won't have a heart attack. Possibly a stroke, but not a heart attack." Stephen was ahead of Jim on the trail; since it was there, there wasn't any reason for Jim to go first, even though they were no longer that familiar with the territory. "People survive strokes." 

"You are one sick fuck, Stephen." 

"C'mon. It's just a joke. Where's the harm?" 

"What made you think of kissing me on the lips in front of Dad anyway?" 

"I didn't mean with tongue or anything. I'd just kind of like to rub it in his face that we survived his rotten little machinations relatively intact. Or we could just say 'I love you' to each other in front of him. If I wanted to really hurt the guy, I'd come out to him." 

"If you wanted to really hurt the guy, you'd come out to him about _me_. You really are bi, then? It wasn't only me?" 

"Looks like Dad struck out twice in the sexual preference crapshoot. He just doesn't know it." 

"Actually, since we're both bi, maybe together we make one straight guy and one gay guy." 

Stephen snorted with laughter. "Which is which?" 

"Well, considering Blair and everything, that'd leave you as the straight guy." 

"Nothing doing. I just found out Rafe's available and might be interested. No chance I'm throwing a shot like _that_ away." 

"You weren't turned off by his Ethel Merman impersonation the night Little Stogie retired...?" 

Stephen cracked up. "The look on Simon's face..." 

"I liked Henri's comment. 'That was fucking _scary_ , Bri'. Blair sure got a kick out of it, though." 

"So did you. I was glad you guys were going to be cabbing it anyway, no better than you could stand up. Has he heard the end of it yet?" 

"You know the Ethel Merman tape Henri presented him with the next Monday after arranging most of Major Crimes as an audience? It mysteriously turned up permanently jammed sideways into the tape player of H's car, and Brian hasn't heard about it since then to my knowledge." 

"Ooh. Remind me not to yank Brian's chain in front of the whole squad room." 

"Not without locking your car, at least." 

"He's a detective. I imagine he has the resources to get into a locked car without breaking a window. No, I just--uh, Jim? Bear." 

"Again?" Jim pulled his gun from the back holster and climbed up level with where Stevie was standing on a high point in the trail. The bear was sitting on a rock about twenty yards away, watching them. "Oh, _that_ bear." 

"Is he following us or something?" 

"Or something. Maybe he's bored." 

"Boring, for a bear, is following a couple of humans around for no apparent reason." 

"And you would know this how?" 

"Maybe he _is_ tame," Stephen speculated. 

"You are not going to go up to him and try to find out, I hope you realize," Jim said grimly. "If I have to cuff you to a tree." 

"Should we just keep going?" 

Jim shrugged. "I don't have any specific knowledge about this kind of behavior. He's not acting much like a wild animal, except that he doesn't get too near us." 

"Think he's sick?" 

"He smells healthy. Though for a wild bear even a healthy smell is still a pretty revolting business. I don't deny he _might_ be screwy, but if it were rabies or anything else he'd be likely to get around here, he still wouldn't be acting like this. He'd be Slavering Demento Bear, and likely dead of a slug through the brain by now from me keeping him from killing us. He wouldn't be Inscrutable Buddha Bear. Did you notice if he caught breakfast and ate?" 

"Couple good-sized fish. He also ate an eel." 

"Yuck," Jim muttered. 

"Seemed to think it was just pretty tasty." 

"Yet more evidence that this is one weird bear. I'm gonna let you call it, Stephen." 

"If you weren't a sentinel I might be worried, but we'll have plenty of warning if he tries anything. Let's keep going." 

* * *

"What do you need me in it for anyway?" Jim wondered. 

"Scale. Nobody's gonna believe how high the thing is. I can't believe we never found this before." 

"The only times we ever came up here and hiked around, we kept getting distracted." 

"By which you mean we couldn't keep our pants up? Yeah, it's hard to walk far that way." 

"Just take the picture, will you?" 

"Move up higher...whoooooa, shit...okay. I'm okay." 

"What happened?" 

"The light, reflecting off the obsidian--it blinded me for a minute. Lost my balance." 

"Is it blinding you now?" 

"No. Must've been the angle I was at for a--whoa hold it--minute. Okay, I'm fine." 

"Stevie, you are gonna _kill_ yourself." 

"My tree-climbing skills haven't atrophied _that_ far. And I needed a higher vantage point." 

"I can see that, but your judgement of climbing venue leaves something to be desired. Ouch." 

"Don't cut yourself." 

"I'll remember those words of wisdom aboard the evac helicopter when they ask me how I managed to rip my hide open in two dozen places, and I'll tell them 'I fell down a slide of obsidian and basalt, and foolishly I disobeyed my brother's injunction not to cut myself. It's my own fault.'" 

"Sarcasm doesn't become you, Jim. Now turn around." 

"Turn _around_? Hanging on to _what_? I'm not kidding, if I fall down this thing, I'm going to be sliced and diced." 

"There's a big smooth rock behind that sharp shard of obsidian sticking out to your right, grab that. I admit your ass could be the basis of a major world religion, but in your basic family snapshots it's customary to photograph people's faces." 

"Got the rock...okay, I'm turned around. Take the picture." 

"I just thought of something. Can the automatics in the camera compensate for all that light reflecting off the obsidian? It's like trying to take a shot of a Las Vegas casino sign." 

"I don't care if the camera blows up! If we're both gonna die for this we're gonna get a picture out of it! Now _shoot_!" 

"Jesus, all right already...there. Hold it, one more...okay. You can come down." 

"Easier said than done." 

"I'm having the same...um...Houston, we have a problem..." 

"I know that tone of voice. That 'I'm in way over my head, big brother, come save my shortsighted ass' voice." 

"'Shortsighted ass?' There's a concept." 

"Just don't move until I get there, all right?" 

"What are you gonna do, get under the tree and tell me not to worry because if I fall you'll catch me? I believed that line when I was five. It was even _possible_ when I was five, though it seldom seemed to work out that way." 

"Just listen to me. Now, I want you to reach over to your right and grab that branch right where it joins on to the trunk, okay?" 

"Okay..." 

"And for God's sake don't drop the camera. Put it in your pocket or something." 

"I can't unless I let go with both hands for a second." 

" _Don't_ do that. Um...here...okay, now, I think you've got a clear line-of-sight to drop it to me." 

"If it hits a branch and bounces and you miss, you're going to be a royal pain for the rest of the trip." 

"Blair gave me that camera. I'll let you take it up with him if I miss, but you can replace the camera a lot more easily than I can replace you. Now drop it here." 

"Here it comes...whew." 

"There, that was easy, wasn't it? Now, grab that branch and use it to swing down to that big fork. Big in the relative sense, at least." 

"Do you think the branch can hold my weight if I slip?" 

"You should have thought of that before you climbed a softwood." 

"Love you too, Jim...okaaaay...got it." 

"There's another branch about two feet below the fork and in toward the main trunk that looks like it can take your weight." 

"Okay...damn, slipped--never climb a tree while wearing hiking boots." 

"Isn't that in the Scout Handbook under 'Blindingly Obvious Camping Safety Tips'?" 

"Jim--oh, shit--" 

"No, not that one--Stephen, I can hear that branch creaking, it's not gonna--" 

"OhhhhhhhSHIT!" 

"STEPHEN!" 

* * *

"You know if you'd fallen face-down instead of ass-first, your nose would be broken right now. And you could have put an eye out." 

"I was kind of shoulders-first most of the way down OUCH! Which is why you're doctoring my back and not my butt. Ow. How about we skip the disinfectant and you just kiss all the scrapes and make them better?" Stephen wondered, wincing. "Ow," he muttered again. 

"How about your mouth instead? If it doesn't fix the scrapes, think of it as a thanks for not getting yourself killed. That would have ruined my whole day." 

Stephen turned his head and looked over his shoulder at Jim, grinning. "My mouth will do for the moment. Mmm..." they separated with a soft moist smack. "Much better. Does the AMA have your lips catalogued?" 

"Why do you think Blair never gets a cold?" 

"Because he won't eat most of the crap you think is fine dining." Stephen turned back around. "You know, you always had great hands, even when your senses were off line. Thanks." 

"Friendly neighborhood medic at your service...this one's going to sting, I'll be as careful as I can...hold still. Piece of bark." 

"I thought I felt something LODGED in there damn, that was sneaky." 

"At least it's out...and...there. All cleaned up, there's a bandage on that bark puncture. If you hadn't been wearing two shirts you'd have wound up slashed to hell. Want me to get all this stuff out of your hair?" 

"Yeah, I'll never find it all." 

Jim started picking bits of tree matter out of Stephen's hair, which was shining like bronze in the late-morning sun. Jim said "I think a thank-you is in order." 

"I just said thanks." 

"No, I mean because after all these years, I finally did manage to catch you when you fell out of a tree." 

"It was more like I landed on you, but I'll give you the credit anyway. Though if I'd hit wrong I could have broken your spine, for God's sake. As it is I'm surprised your tailbone's not cracked." 

"Haven't sat down that hard since last time we played ice hockey. And I couldn't help it, it was instinctive. I love you; it gives me an aversion to having to pack your dead body out of here. Along with the fact that it's getting hot and the flies would be collecting by the time I made it to the trailhead where we left the truck." 

"Still, Jim, a hundred eighty pounds--make it one-eighty-five with clothes and gear--accelerated by a fall of about thirty feet at one gravity--adjusted for altitude above sea level--" 

"Energy equals mass times velocity squared and I got squashed by an elephant." 

"In short." 

"You forgot to adjust for the couple of dozen branches you hit on the way down. They broke your fall." 

"Not to mention my skin and assorted blood vessels." Stephen sighed. "We're not as young as we used to be, are we?" 

"We'd be a couple of pretty strange guys if we were. We're not kids, that's all. And besides, even then, you couldn't have taken that fall without messing yourself up a little." 

"Would you have caught me?" Stephen wondered quietly. 

"I'd have let you land on me, at least." Jim leaned over, pausing in his careful extraction of foreign matter from Stephen's hair, and softly kissed the nape of his brother's neck. He liked the warmth on his mouth, and the taste, and the spicy, sunwarmed smell, and the sound Stephen made; so he added a few more, a line of slow kisses along soft, tanned skin over resilient muscle, out to the point of Stephen's shoulder. 

"I wish I knew how to purr," Stephen said very softly, smiling, then gave his voice an exaggerated romantic-heroine flutter. "Would you make passionate love to me right here on the jagged rocks and chunks of volcanic glass?" 

Chuckling, Jim pressed his cheek to the smooth sun-heated hair, running his hands gently up and down Stephen's bare arms, careful of scrapes. "No," he grinned. 

"Whew. Thank God. I just got beat up by a tree, I don't think I could take that, too." 

* * *

"Uh, Jim? Bear." 

"Not _again_!" 

The bear was sitting by the stream, right next to where Jim had staked his rod holder. He looked around at them, then back at the stream. 

"Well, that does it," Jim muttered, storming past Stephen toward the tent while shucking his pack. "If he's gonna be a fixture, I'll just treat him like one. He's not a large carnivore, he's part of the landscape." 

"I just don't get it. How does he know where we're headed well enough to get there ahead of us?" Stephen said. 

Jim looked around at him...and felt a low growl rumble inaudibly in his chest. Stephen hadn't put his flannel or his T-shirt back on; instead he'd enlisted Jim's aid in turning them into a pad to protect his scraped-up back and shoulders from his day pack. The sight he presented--standing braced easily on the downslope of the trail where it emerged from between the trees--in worn jeans, hiking boots, no shirt and a lightweight backpack, caused Jim to opine privately that the beefcakes in the outdoor men's wear catalogues didn't have shit on Stephen Jeremy Ellison. His lightly browned skin gleamed with the sunblock Jim had insisted on rubbing all over him after his shirts were turned to emergency duty; the shine accentuated his weight-bench-augmented physique. 

After shaking his head at the bear for a moment, Stephen glanced over at Jim. He blinked as Jim just continued to Look at him with a capital L, then smiled. "Am I being cruised?" 

Jim just grinned and ducked into the tent to leave his day pack. 

Stephen appeared inside a few moments later. "I think I'm going to take a plunge in the stream." 

"I wasn't exactly kidding, but don't take the fixture thing that literally. That's a wild bear over there." 

"He gave me space this morning." 

"Speaking of which, you were the human ice cube this morning. Why do you want to go back in?" 

"Jim, you _can't_ have forgotten that I _always_ bitch at how cold it is washing up first thing in the morning while it's still less than sixty degrees and there's no sun, and that I always insist on doing it anyway. At the moment, however, I just got back from a five-hour hike in the sun in eighty-degree weather and I'm sweating right through this thing." He dropped his pack, and the now-damp pad they'd improvised fell after it. "Plus it'll feel good on the various bruises, scrapes and contusions." 

"...okay, but I'm coming with you. Really, Stephen, this is not smart." 

"I think he just likes us, for some reason." 

"Yeah, oven-broiled with cornbread stuffing and a little dill..." 

"Just don't go blowing his brains out if he gets to his feet when I go out there, because he's probably just preparing to wander off a ways." 

"You mean when _we_ go out there." 

Jim remained tense as Stephen strode easily across the soft grass in his trunks, but, true to his behavior so far, the bear just considered Stephen, got up and meandered off, heading downstream this time, before finding a new vantage point and having a seat again, within eyeshot, but not too close. 

Stephen splashed in and fell over in a deeper spot where the clear mountain water showed soft green, surrounded by little skirls of whitewater. He surfaced and let out a whoop of alarm. 

"Did you think it got any warmer since dawn?" 

"I'll be used to it in a minute. The sun makes a difference." 

"Stay away from the stagnant spots, Stephen." 

"I _know_ , Jim, you're not my nursemaid." 

"No, I'm an army medic and I'm intimately familiar with the kind of infections you can get in the woods, and where you're likely to find them. Even clear stream water is usually crawling with tiny inhabitants, and those scrapes have barely scabbed." 

"None of them are deep, except that bark puncture. I'll let you bathe my back with boiled water and smear antibacterial ointment all over it when I come out, how would that be?" 

"I was planning on that anyway, actually." 

Stephen laughed, bracing himself against a sunwarmed rock and leaning back on his hands, out of the water up to his waist. "You know you could use a dip, too. Bears aren't the only large carnivores who can get aromatic." 

"I'll treasure that sentiment." 

"C'mon, Jim, loosen up." 

"Loosen up? Loosen _up_? We are talking about a _bear_ , here...oh, all right. But I'm gonna leave my gun right here." He made sure Stephen saw where he set it, braced in a couple of rocks within easy reach of the water. The younger Ellison rolled his eyes, but said nothing, nodding. The bear, meanwhile, was plainly crashed out, flat on his back in the sun on a broad rock overlooking the water. 

Jim came back in his trunks and did a no-nonsense belly-flop off the bank, sending a thick arc of clear water across Stephen, who had turned around, resting against the rock with his arms folded under his head, sunning his back. 

"Ack!" he protested, but he was laughing. 

"Are you trying to get a sunburn on top of all those scrapes?" 

"Jim...don't..." with each word, Stephen flung a sweeping armful of water over his hastily retreating brother, "...be...so...ANAL!" On the last word both arms came down hard on either side of Jim, engulfing him in a tsunami of white water. At once, Jim dove for Stephen's waist, locking his arms around it and dragging them both under. 

The frantic struggle that ensued could have been mistaken for the sudden appearance of an underwater geyser, except for the occasional limb appearing out of the turbulent white, and gargled cries of "Son of a--" "I'll show you a--" "--hey, watch it on the--" "Don't even _think_ ab--" et cetera. These dwindled to nothing as the thrashing slowly--very slowly--subsided, and two large, drippy men breached as a unit, holding on to each other and gasping desperately. As soon as they even began to get their breath back, the laughter started. Jim had his arms around Stephen's waist again, the water supporting the younger man's weight such that Jim could easily press his cold, wet face into Stephen's cold, wet chest, burying laughter in the thick muscle. Stephen rested his cheek on top of Jim's head, arms around his shoulders, as they began to calm down a little, still grinning and chuckling and coughing. 

"Well," Jim said, swallowed, and tried again as they slowly drifted and bobbed with the currents, "at least you didn't steal my trunks." 

"You never did manage to get mine, except when I wanted you to." 

"Why was that, anyway? I usually had more reach than you." 

"You played football, I wrestled. You learned how to crash headlong into things, I learned how to squirm competitively." 

"Hm. Wonder why that didn't occur to me." 

"Maybe because by the time I started wrestling, we usually had other things on our minds when we were all over each other in the water." 

Rather than retreating into a wisecrack, Jim just lifted his head and regarded his brother steadily. Stephen was smiling, the expression in his eyes soft. 

Jim conceded, feeling the gentle expression that stole over his own face, "Yeah, we did. Usually the water wasn't this cold, though." 

"Remember Sammamish a couple of summers after the Loch Ness incident?" 

Jim grinned. "I remember us cursing God, fate, mother nature and everything else we could think of. What _was_ that?" 

"I don't know. I guess the water was too cold to get off in but not cold enough to block the instinct completely." 

"Which ended with us trapped in the lake for a couple of hours, wondering if those damn hard-ons were _ever_ going to go away." 

"It would have helped if we'd stopped the fooling around we were doing whenever nobody was looking our way." 

They laughed again as Jim reached out and halted them against a warm white granite boulder, which they couldn't look straight at for the sun reflecting off it so brightly. "It was worth it to be with you," he said softly, touching Stephen's face. "We _never_ had enough time..." 

Stephen shook his head. "No, we didn't..." He took a deep breath. "Sometimes I still think that you can't have any idea how I loved you--that nobody could understand." 

"I can. Really, I _can_ \--I was always so proud of you..." 

"And I was so proud you were _my_ brother, my--mmmph--" 

Between breathless kisses, Jim murmured, quiet and desperate, "I want to be _with_ you. Be back with you. I do. But words aren't easy--touching--touching's easier--" 

"I know. I'm not really doing any better than you are, but at least we're not doing any worse. What I'm afraid of is...you, of what you did to me, what you might do again. With you it's everything. But it's only being afraid that feels so hard. It's simple. All we have to do is...let go." 

"Not that simple," Jim whispered. "You know that." 

"Yeah," Stephen said, a note of bitterness creeping into his voice. "Believe me, I know. It's all right. We've been doing it, Jim, you've been _there_ , with me, for a few moments here, a few there like now...Rome wasn't built in a day. So don't get frustrated with yourself, and don't think that I am. If I seem to be, it's because I'm frustrated with myself, too, and because I miss you so much." 

"I do love you." 

"I know you do, I know..." 

A shadow passed over them, and Jim shuddered, looking up at the sky. "It's clouding up," he said, pulling Stephen close against him. "We'd better get out." 

"Just when I was getting used to it," Stephen whispered. 

* * *

"I know why it's so hard." 

Stephen stirred, then turned over. "Hmm?" he wondered blearily. 

"I know why it's so hard. To let go. Another reason, I mean." 

"Mm." Stephen rubbed his eyes and pulled himself a little higher in his bedroll. "You do this kind of thing better at night, don't you," he smiled sleepily. "You always did, really." 

"Safer at night. Quieter. More private." 

Stephen nodded with sleepy solemnity. "I understand. You said you know another reason why...why it's so hard to let go." 

"The game, the whole time...when we weren't just brothers, not just best friends...we were allies, we were _everything_. Eventually even lovers. And it was easy...to be _there_. No barriers. Together. _Really_ together." 

"Yes," Stephen sighed, reaching over for Jim; his hand contacted Jim's arm, then moved up and slid out across his chest to rest against the soft, deep thumping he felt through the thin cotton. "Really together." 

"Simple--see: Neither of us had anything but the other." Jim was quiet then. 

Stephen thought. "And that's not true any more." 

"It's not that we weren't afraid to...to let go. We were. Dad saw to that. But we wanted each other so much _more_ than we were afraid." 

"You're saying that we had a lot more to gain by letting go and...loving so completely, being so real with each other, than we had to lose by taking the risk and being...disappointed if the other...let us down." 

"Yeah," Jim whispered, covering Stephen's hand on his chest with his own. "So we couldn't lose by trying." 

"You said 'wanted each other so much'. Do you mean 'wanted' or 'needed'?" 

"For me? Wanted." Jim caressed the back of Stephen's hand. "Could've lived without you. People deal with things like that all the time. Plenty of brothers'd just have let it happen, grow apart, barely speak. But I just didn't want to. I loved you. You were always precious to me; I couldn't lose you if there was any way to avoid it." 

"And now we both love other...other things. And people." 

"Now we both have _lives_. We have other things to want that much. What did we have besides each other then? Other friends, some of them important, but nothing to _devote_ ourselves to, there. School. Sports, projects. Hobbies. Things to care about, things that mattered, but nothing to be _passionate_ about except each other, no matter what it might have looked like, even to us." 

"And now, as adults, we've had enough time to find out what else we're passionate about in life, and pursue those things, in a way we couldn't as kids." 

Jim nodded. "We've got other things." 

"We no longer have less to lose by letting go than we have to gain, like we did then." 

"No. Now we have a _hell_ of a lot more to lose. A hell of a lot more. And we're not even sure what it is we'd gain--we only know we can't seem to stop wanting it--can't get around it, can't ignore it any more--" 

"Jim. Are you okay?" He didn't sound okay. His voice was strangled and his breathing was loud. Plus Jim didn't usually talk like Earnest Hemingway on a bender. Stephen struggled to sit, leaned over and found Jim's face with his other hand, the other still on his brother's chest. "Your heartbeat's speeding up, and you're gasping, but you're not feverish. I don't hear any congestion in your lungs, can't feel rash or swelling. I think you're having a panic attack." 

"Never had--not like this--" 

"First time for everything," Stephen said gently, turning away briefly to drag his bedroll over. Rather than fool around rebuilding the two bedrolls into one, he just undid Jim's and got him on top of it, arranged his own right up against it, and retrieved a couple of the spare thermal blankets they always brought in case a storm front came through (which could briefly drop the temperature by twenty or more degrees). He shook them out over Jim and the piled bedrolls and got under, pulling Jim close. The fact that Jim was not doing too well was made even more obvious by his complete lack of resistance--he was letting Stephen take over completely. 

"Can't breathe--" 

"It just feels that way. I know it sounds crazy, but you need to try to breathe more slowly. I know Blair's taught you meditation techniques--" 

"Can't--! You--don't understand--reactions to--chemicals, maybe--plant--" 

"Jim, no. When Dana realized that I might be having these on occasion, she made sure I knew how to tell whether it was a panic attack or something like what you're talking about--a systemic allergy reaction, or some other kind of attack that might have a few similar symptoms, something that might really be dangerous--" 

"You're--not--sen--" 

Stephen made his voice, while still soft, firm with conviction. "No, I'm not a sentinel. But from what you and Blair have told me, the reactions that don't involve distortion of one or more of your senses are different from the average person's not in the symptoms so much, but in what you're reacting to." 

"Oh shit, things going around--" 

"Vertigo? Damn. Sounds like you're getting the Combo Special. Just stay very still, and when the rushes hit you--" 

"Going numb." 

"Bad tingling and numbness, getting worse the farther out toward the extremities you go, right? Face starting to feel numb?" 

"Yes," Jim managed shudderingly. 

"All right, listen to me closely. The only sensory symptoms you've got are tingling, numbness and vertigo. Those are all classic panic attack symptoms. Your heart rate is fast, but not dangerously, and it's steady and strong. You feel like you can't breathe, but your lungs aren't constricted; it's because you're hyperoxygenating. And your airway is open, not blocked or closing. 

"You're going to be all right, Jim. It's normal to be afraid that you're dying, or at least feel sure that something dangerous is wrong with you. All that's wrong is that something's tripped your emergency-response trigger into overdrive, and you've got neurotransmitters doing unauthorized things, sending the wrong signals, overloading your receptors. It feels like shit, but it can't hurt you. And if it does start to affect your senses, well, Blair called me your backup guide, didn't he? Didn't I soothe you out of a spike when I was only four? So don't worry. I'll take care of you. Right?" 

Still shuddering, Jim managed to nod. "Keep talking," he stuttered. 

Stephen kissed Jim's forehead gently. "Shhh...it's okay...I'm right here. We'll just ride it out. Your mind is going to try to take you down some nasty roads, because all your red-alert receptors are firing and your fight-or-flight response is blowing every smallest concern up huge, or creating concerns if it can't find any. When the thoughts come, just push them away. Just keep thinking that it's not real, and that if anything does happen, I'm right here. I'll take care of it." 

"Stupid crap, running through my head--Jesus, I see why Sandburg hates this--" 

"I hate them too." 

"You've...?" 

"Yeah, like I said, but only a few. Not this severe." 

"Stupid--hanging from a fucking _train_ HALF-BLIND and I didn't..." 

"This isn't in response to anything like that, or any _one_ thing at all," Stephen whispered. "In fact, if a squad of terrorist commandos stormed into the clearing right now, this would probably vanish and you'd kick their butts with no problem. It's the same reason I exploded--things coming to the surface. Not repressed memories, but repressed feelings...and you have fifty times the stuff to repress, so that you could function, that I ever had. The good, the bad, the generally overwhelming." 

"Don't even know...what it..." 

"No. You probably aren't even consciously aware of the things cracking your floodgates, at least not yet...you see, Jim--you know what I think? Though you'll likely want to hit me for this." 

Jim choked a laugh that turned into a sob. "What?" 

"I think it means you're making progress in learning to drop your barriers when you want to. This is just kind of a side effect." 

"Then fuck progress--" Jim suddenly made an anguished sound and squeezed his eyes shut, hiding his face in Stephen's chest. 

"Moving your eyes making you dizzy? Okay. Listen to me, Jim--I know how these things can mess with _my_ perceptions, so remember that it's not your senses. It's not a zone, it's not a spike, it's not a drug reaction, it's got nothing to do with your senses. It's a bad panic attack, and it'll stop of its own accord. You may not be worth much for a while afterward, but you'll be fine. I promise. I swear to you, I do know what I'm talking about. That's it, that's right," Stephen murmured into his brother's ear as Jim shuddered again with another tingling wave of vertigo and clenched onto Stephen with crushing force. "That's right, hang onto me. Tight as you need to, tight as it takes. I'm right here, and I'm all for you right now, Jim. All for you...cry, if you can, even though I know you hate it," he whispered gently. "Trust me, it helps." 

* * *

"So. Insight makes me panic." It was four hours later; dawn was still hours away, and Jim was still twitching occasionally, throwing off the occasional twinge of vertigo and the accompanying tingling, but the worst had passed. Stephen was lying next to him, but Jim had pulled back from him. He hadn't gone so far as to ask Stephen to drag their bedrolls apart again, but he'd definitely made himself some symbolic space. 

Stephen, propped on one elbow facing Jim, made himself refrain from touching his brother (again) and said "Ah, yes. Now comes the self-recrimination." 

"What?" 

"You feel like an idiot." 

"Shit, wouldn't you?" 

"Yeah, I did. And I'm not going to tell you that it's not something you can help because you'll just come out with something Neanderthal like 'I _should_ have been able to help it'." 

Jim said nothing, obviously stewing. 

"I know this isn't going to do much good, but I have to say it anyway. You're equating a physiological phenomenon with a psychological characteristic. Panic attack indicates cowardice. Now, that makes perfect sense if running a fever due to food poisoning indicates gluttony." 

Jim opened his eyes. "What?" 

"I think it's the names that are so confusing. 'Panic attack'. 'Anxiety attack'. The chemical response to stress--which is a physiological phenomenon, like I said--creates the feelings of fear. The feelings of panic do not create the physiological phenomenon. That's backwards. Muscle tension is also a physical response to stress. Does getting a tight neck in a bad situation make you a coward?" 

"You can shut up now, Stephen. I get your point--" 

"You just don't buy it." 

"Spoken like a true civilian. I can't _afford_ to start having this particular 'physiological response' to stress any more than I can afford epilepsy," Jim gritted out. "I'm a _cop_. Stress is my _life_." 

"Have you ever had a panic attack before you and I started...what we've started, here?" 

Jim sighed. "No. Well..." 

"Yeah. You told me you had some minor symptoms, minor chest pain, unexplained impulses to cry, until you realized that what was...left unspoken between you and me was the reason." 

"And even _that_ started to look like it might become a problem at work." 

"Right, I got that, but this isn't about any responses to _outside_ pressure, Jim, that's nothing you need to worry about. This is all coming from inside. Like I said, what's most likely is that even if you were having a panic attack and suddenly a situation exploded or whatever, you'd detach, like always, take care of things, no problem. Then go home and finish the attack or whatever." 

"How can you _know_ that?" 

"I can't, I can only tell you what's most likely, given your history." 

"Since when are you a shrink, Stephen?" 

"I'm not. I've talked to Dana about you. I think that's what she'd say." 

"Oh, hell." 

"You'd rather I pulled this stuff out of my ass? Jim, can I say something before you go off on me about it?" 

"Sure. Why not." Jim twitched again, and pressed his lips together in irritation. 

"I'm flattered you had the panic attack." 

Jim was quiet. "Go on. I assume there _is_ more to that statement?" 

"Yes. Like I said, you're breaking your butt trying to do something you're afraid to do, don't know how to do, something you've always had good, survival-based reasons _not_ to do. And you _don't_ have to be putting yourself through this. You're doing it for me--and I don't mean as a favor to me. I don't know if you had the initial symptoms because you still loved me or because--" 

"I do love you." 

"I know. But there were other ways around the chest pain and what have you. Hell, a short course of Xanax would likely have knocked that out and not even required you to get counseling or take time off work. But instead of going to the doctor and saying 'I'm a cop, got some stress symptoms cropping up, no big deal, let's get rid of them', you chose to come to me and...work on it, because you wanted me back." 

Jim was quiet again. 

"Probably one of the toughest things you've ever done in your life. Thank you," Stephen whispered. 

After a pause, Jim murmured back, in a suspiciously thick voice, "Now do you believe I'm not leaving again?" 

"I'm getting closer." 

* * *

" _Hey_ , hey, easy, easy..." Jim was shuddering with renewed tremors when he felt Stephen's hands on his shoulders push him back to the bedrolls. "Lie still a minute. This'll pass. Sometimes changing stages of consciousness can trigger it. It's a solemn bitch when it keeps waking you up just as you're about to fall asleep, let me tell you." 

Jim's nose informed him that breakfast was ready. "Been...up long?" he asked, taking slow, even breaths. 

"Long enough to get breakfast. Do you think you can eat?" Stephen suddenly turned away and sneezed. 

Jim nodded slowly. "Gesundheit. Just give me a minute." 

"Take your time." Stephen sniffed and settled next to him, stroking him slowly, holding his hand. Jim sighed and relaxed. "I remembered you like your gravy extra greasy," Stephen said, smiling. "Your stomach okay?" 

"Yeah." 

"That's one of the symptoms you were spared. I don't usually throw up, either." 

Jim noticed his brother's face--eyes pink and weepy, nose a bit red and swollen. His voice was scratchy, too. "What's wrong? You didn't somehow manage to find ragweed up here, did you?" 

"No, it's the smoke from the fire. Really got to me, for some reason. It didn't seem to matter how well I stayed upwind of it, it was just really... _acrid_ , strong. Smelled bitter, sharp." 

"Try not to breathe it," Jim said reasonably. "You going to be okay?" 

"Yeah, it's fading, I'll be fine." 

"Stevie, when was the last time you had...one of..." 

"A panic attack? Not counting blowing up in Dana's office, which doesn't really fit the profile of a panic attack...I forget exactly. Years ago. Can you sit up?" 

"I think so." Stephen helped him sit and handed him a plate full of camping-style frying-pan food, of the sort they had consumed like ravenous animals emerging from hibernation as kids (and which precipitated unwontedly frequent scurries into the brush, trailing a roll of toilet paper, for most of the subsequent day), and which Blair would rather chew bark than eat. Jim fell to with an appetite. 

* * *

"Hey Jim, look what I found!" Stephen made his way down toward where Jim was sitting on the rocks by the stream, in the shade, idly ploshing a stick in the water. The younger man was silhouetted by the sun; he seemed to be holding up a lump of black, soft-edged rock. 

"What is that, coal ore?" 

"I don't know," Stephen said, idly tossing the black lump as he came to a halt, leaning against the massive Douglas pine that grew out over the water near where Jim was sitting. "I just liked the feel of it. Actually, that's why I'm here, to find out--I thought I'd shove it up your ass and see if--hey!" Jim's hand had closed on his ankle and yanked, sending the grinning Stephen sprawling on his own hinder parts, the lump of rock flying into the stream. 

"I was gonna split the take!" Stephen insisted through a near-hysterical fit, brought on by Jim's obvious and desperate attempt not to burst out laughing himself. Instead, Jim scrambled over and fixed the mirth-helpless man in a full-body pin. "Oh no no no no, don't even _try_ to spit in my mouth," Stephen managed to choke. Jim was already jockeying for position, but he was laughing too much to succeed, at the spectacle of Stephen whipping his head left and right in avoidance, unable to keep his lips pressed closed for grinning so hard. 

Jim settled for making a raspberry against the side of Stephen's neck. Stephen's arms worked loose of his grip and Jim prepared for an assault, but Stephen only wrapped them around Jim's ribs. "You want to let me up? This is kind of hell on my back." 

"Oh. Sorry." Jim braced his arms to either side of Stephen's shoulders and executed a push-up move, hopped his feet forward to either side of Stephen's body, and, combined with Stephen's grip keeping them chest-to-chest, ended them up sitting with Jim straddling Stephen's lap. Since Stephen was wearing a thin white T-shirt, Jim could tell if he was aggravating a bruise or a raw patch of skin, and as he settled, his hands came to rest gently on his brother's back, both of them still smiling. 

"I think it _is_ coal ore," Stephen said mildly, holding up the hand he'd been tossing the dark lump in; it was smeared with a faintly oily residue. Jim took the hand and sniffed it, barely touched his tongue to the palm, paused, and said "It is, but not very high quality." 

"Rarely is, right at the surface," Stephen said, moved his hand so Jim's was in reach and kissed the backs of his knuckles. Then he began to wipe the dark smears off in the thick grass, wrapping his other arm around the small of Jim's back. "How do you feel?" He raised his cleaned-up hand to take Jim's again, and his eyes to meet his brother's. 

"Okay. Tired." 

"It's like running a marathon. A lot of people have symptoms over the next day." 

"Light...the colors do strobe, shift around my field of vision...not quite in synch with how I actually move my eyes. It's a little disorienting." He kissed Stephen softly, sighing at the enthusiastic response. "Thanks for everything you did last night, Stephen." 

"No charge." Stephen smiled. 

"You know, I think Blair's wrong. It's not a guide you'd make a good one of; you should've been a nurse. You have the empathy quotient of St. Francis of Assisi." 

Stephen grinned and shook his head. "If I wanted to work hell's hours for squat pay and benefits, take galling crap from my superiors and clients both, and dead-end careerwise in about five years, I'd have stayed on the track I started--that job with one of Dad's incorporated companies, that I took right out of college." 

"At least you got your own secretary." 

"Meeting Marah was the _only_ good thing about that job. Thank God I managed to get completely out of Ellison Industries in only four years." 

"Why would you have dead-ended? You were Ellison's boy, after all." 

"Dead-ended, maybe not, but I received _no_ special attention whatsoever. He gave me to his old pal Murrison." 

"Fuck. You never mentioned that. Though when you called your boss of the time a 'complacent dolt' I could have figured. And for whatever reason, Dad likes Murrison better than he ever liked either of us." 

"I know." Stephen imitated their father's voice. "'I was given a start in the business world by my father, Stephen, and that's what I'm going to give you--but that's all I got from him, and it's all you're getting from me.' That and an enormous trust fund, but he couldn't do anything about that, since it really came from Grandpa." 

Jim made a face. "I hate it when you do his voice. You do it way too well." 

"Sorry. I don't really want to bring him out here with us, either. Why don't you tell me what you were thinking about instead?" 

Jim readjusted himself a little, letting his hand settle to the back of Stephen's neck, which he recalled was relatively abrasion-free. And he'd always liked the feel of the soft little hairs there. "I wasn't thinking that much, I was...letting things think me. Trying to clear my mind. It's not as easy to do without Blair. By the way, have you seen the bear lately?" 

"He's asleep." 

"Where?" 

"I don't know. Around here somewhere." 

"You hear him snoring?" 

Stephen laughed and shook his head. "No. But he's around." 

"What have _you_ been thinking about while you're wandering the area?" 

Stephen's cheeks flushed just a little. "You," he said softly. "What else?" 

"My aftershave?" Jim wondered, smiling back. "My impending hyperopia? My white sock fetish?" 

Stephen rested his head against Jim's chest, snugging him in close. "About how much I want to be able to forgive you completely. I have, on the surface. But I can't lie and tell you it goes all the way down...and about how much I hope you can forgive me, all the way down." 

"Stevie...you didn't do anything _wrong_ ," Jim murmured into the soft hair, and planted a gentle kiss on Stephen's head. 

"I said all the way down, Jim. People have feelings and they're not always rational. You blamed me for several things, for a long time. That's not just going to go away because you decide you were the one in the wrong." 

"I don't want to resent you, either," Jim sighed. "But there's something even deeper than the resentment, for both of us. We couldn't have stayed so angry for so long if we didn't still love each other too much to just get over it. Not even in the space of twenty years did either of us manage to do that." 

"I guess you're right." 

"Is it that you _know_ you still have resentment, or that you can't swear that you don't?" 

Stephen was quiet a long time. "When I'm with you like this, I can't even look there and see. I don't see how I could be anything but grateful to have you again. When I'm alone...it seems a lot more likely that there's no way I could have just dropped it like so much dross. Jim, maybe I never can. But that's what forgiveness is about--if you truly don't harbor _any_ resentment on _any_ level, you can't actually forgive someone, because there's no longer a...a hurt, an injustice; the pain's just all gone like it never was. Forgiving is about saying 'You hurt me, you were in the wrong, and that hurt's going to be with me, probably, for the rest of my life--but I forgive you for it, because I love you more than I love my hurt and anger at you.'" 

Jim stroked his hair. "You're so erudite with this stuff. And you're right. Blair calls it 'excusing' when you deny the hurt, or at least deny that the person who hurt you is responsible for it--like if you were to tell yourself 'he did it because he was young and inexperienced and scared, mostly for me, so I don't blame him for it'--that's not forgiveness. It's the first thing I tried to do after you and I started speaking again, but Blair slapped me out of it." 

"Dana slapped _me_ out of it," Stephen said, with a nod of understanding against Jim's T-shirt-clad chest. 

"I wish you hadn't fallen out of that tree," Jim said. "I have an almost unbearable urge to run my hands all over you." 

Stephen tensed a little, then loosened again with a long sigh. "Jesus, Jim. Way to make it hard to keep it in my pants." 

"Who says I want you to?" Jim pointed out, tugging gently at Stephen's earlobe, chuckling at the muffled noise his brother made in response. 

Stephen raised his eyes to Jim's again. "We never really came to a clear conclusion about whether Blair intended to convey his acceptance of the idea without actually pushing you into it, or not." 

"I'm not worried about that any more," Jim admitted. "I, um...had another dream." 

"Like the one that decided you about coming up here? A vision type thing?" 

"Yeah. The freaking bear was even in it, if you can believe." 

Stephen chuckled. "He's really getting on your nerves, isn't he?" 

"Nah. Not any more. I'm starting to think of him as kind of a team mascot. 'Jim and Stephen scrimmage against their own past.'" 

Stephen laughed with him. "And Blair's our cheerleader." 

"And Dana's the coach. With all these people in our corner we ought to be making a little more progress, don't you think?" 

"We're not doing bad. You're sitting in my lap and you haven't said once that it's making you feel stupid." 

"I'm not sure that counts. I got used to the idea of sitting in someone else's lap with Blair." 

"I'll remember to thank him." 

* * *

Blair sashayed down the hall, doing the Sandburg Bop, somehow managing to make the two large bags of groceries he was carrying seem like movement enhancers such as pom poms or flags, which was no mean feat considering he couldn't actually move them at all. "Well the preacher and the teacher" (bop!) "Lord, they're a caution" (bop!) "They are the talk of the town!" (bop! bop!) "When the gossip gets to flyin' (bop!) "and they ain't lyin'" (bop!) "when the sun comes fallin' down!" (bop! bop!) 

Blair had been awash in feelgood since Stephen and Jim took off for the mountains. Despite their sniping at each other as they got into the truck in the parking lot of Dana's office building, Blair was sure all the good vibes he was getting from somewhere had to do with those two, and he took it as a good sign. He wasn't even annoyed by the four additional lectures he had to do this week to pay back two anthro teaching fellows who'd taken his teaching load two weeks ago; said classes were introductory and Blair could teach them in his sleep, and probably had more than once. 

He produced keys from his jeans pocket with a flourish and unlocked the door, side-bopping through. "Yeah, we're talkin' 'bout, talkin' 'bout China Grove, whoa-oh-oh!" (bop! bop!) "Whoa-oh, China JESUSFUCKINGCHRIST!" The bags took a dive, spilling their contents all over creation. 

The bear sitting in the middle of the room, on the kitchen side of the couch, hornked softly as if in apology. From behind it emerged a somewhat abashed-looking wolf, head drooping and ears down, whining softly. Seeing it, Blair managed to cancel red alert and slid down the door to the floor, tailbone striking it with a thump. He hyperventilated a moment, then turned his attention back to the two furred intruders. 

"DON'T * _DO_ * THAT!" He screamed, making frustrated/imploring gestures with both arms. 

The wolf whined, the bear hornked, and Blair slumped, assuming his message had gotten across. Slowly, he got up and started collecting the groceries; for a wonder, nothing was broken. "Glad I skipped the eggs. Okay, so what the hell are you doing here scaring the shit out of me, and who is this?" Blair asked the wolf, gesturing with his head at the bear. 

There was a soft, bedrock-deep growl, like a gigantic, idling Harley, and Blair, gathering up all the refrigerator-bound items, looked up to see the jaguar peering down at him from the bedroom. At this, he paused. 

Thinking, he went to the fridge and started storing foodstuffs. Jim was the one who had the visions; Blair might have had the way of the Shaman passed on to him, but he was still figuring out what that meant--of all the folks in the tribe, visions _were_ most obviously the Shaman's department, but either Blair wasn't doing something right or he hadn't reached that stage in his development yet. 

Since the fountain, though, he had seen the wolf and the jaguar twice. Once, he couldn't say for certain that he hadn't been asleep. The second time, he couldn't say for certain that he hadn't been hallucinating. Both times, it turned out either Jim had been in potential danger, or Blair had been. Jim was able to have more general visions...his being a somewhat irregular kind of Sentinel might necessitate them, to keep him on course and functioning properly, as well as to serve as warnings. Warning visions were more abrupt, more solid, more powerful, and usually more brief, though they tended to repeat themselves as long as the danger was extant, unlike Jim's other visions. 

Excluding the vision he and Jim shared when Jim brought him back--rather (he was still analyzing that one) when Jim had provided Blair an avenue to return, Blair had only had those two sightings of their spirit guides... 

Looking up from stashing the milk, Blair said quickly to the still-present bear, "Like I said, who are you, anyway?" 

The bear hornked softly as the wolf came up to Blair, whining. The jaguar had come down the stairs, but he stayed farther off, standing just beyond the bear, twitching his tail in an excess of aggravation, emitting a low rumble, ears slanting back. The bear slumped to the floor and covered his face with his paws. 

Warning visions. 

Something is wrong. 

"What is it? What's wrong? Are Jim and Stephen in some kind of trouble? Why the hell does this all have to be so cryptic?!" Blair swore, running a hand through his hair and shutting the fridge door on its fresh acquisitions. "Okay. I've got a map of where they are--Jim always leaves one with me if he goes camping somewhere I've never been, so I'll be able to show the Forest Service where to start looking if he doesn't come back. Is that what I need to do? Get Search and Rescue out th--" 

A loud hornk--almost a bellow--from the bear, a snarl from the jaguar and a snarl-and-bark from the wolf cut that thought off. "Okay, okay..." Blair was pacing rapidly now, the wolf, appropriately enough, dogging his heels anxiously. "No Forest Service, no authorities." 'Geez, I forget how big wolves are until he shows up,' Blair thought irrelevantly with the part of his mind that wasn't working on the mystery. 

"But that reaction basically clinches it that the problem _is_ Jim and Stephen, not me or anybody else important to us. The weird factor is you." He halted, whirling to face the bear, who was sitting up again. "Who _are_ you?" 

The bear hornked quietly and got up. He came up and butted Blair gently in the stomach. He may have been a small bear, but that's like saying "small glacier" or "small seismic event". Blair was knocked backward into the table next to the door. "Hey, watch it." 

The bear sat down and stared up at Blair with his blue, not-the-best-visual-acuity bear eyes. His brown fur, looking faintly reddish-gold in the mid-morning light, shone more than your ordinary bear fur. 

"You know, you look kind of familiar." 

The bear blinked at him. 

"I mean, it's probably just--hold it. Hold everything just a damn minute..." Jim and Stephen, off in the deep woods--well, deep enough as far as Blair was concerned--attempting to reestablish their...their deepest connection, to get past barriers of pain and mistrust--not the easiest of undertakings at any time, how much more so in their case? Traumatic, dealing with those barriers, wrestling with their own ingrained defense mechanisms--almost, in a sense, working against themselves, against their own survival instincts; and the more they succeeded, the greater the trauma, rather than the other way around--good stress? Maybe. Shock, any way you looked at it-- 

When those barriers came down, out there in the middle of nowhere... 

Shock. Great. Big. Shock-- 

"SHIT!" Blair opined, and scrambled for his camping pack, not even attempting to load it systematically. He could only hope against hope that the Volvo would make it up the mountain roads to the trailhead. 

"What's happening up there, you guys? Has it already happened? How are they?" He turned back from the improvised closet in his room to find he was alone in the apartment. 

"Shit," he muttered again. 

As he barreled out of the front door about ten minutes later, trying not to trip over canned and boxed goods, he made a mental note to call and leave a message on Simon's home machine explaining the situation; but first, he'd get on the road. 

"Oh, _shit_ ," he said again, pounding the steering wheel with one fist as soon as he got onto the freeway. He should be back in time for tomorrow's classes, but today...he pulled out his cell phone. Tap, tap, tap..."C'mon, pick up...yeah, hey, Perce? Blair. Look, I can't take your afternoon class today...I know, I know, and I picked up Monday's class, didn't I? Look, it's not my fault. Jim and his brother are up in the mountains camping, and, uh, they think something's happened to them. Yeah. We're not sure, we just know they're in some kind of trouble. _No_ I'm not gonna give 'em the map and let Search and Rescue find them, for Christ's sake! I know...I know. I will. I promise. I wouldn't do this if it weren't so serious...yeah...thanks, I'm sure they'll be okay too. Yeah. See you, Perce." He clicked off, wishing he could slam the phone down instead. "Jerk. 'Give 'em the map' my ass...if Jim were my _wife_ you'd never have said that..." Thank God it was still early; as long as he didn't get lost out there in the woods and wind up having to backtrack--fond dreams, he snorted to himself--he should have as much light left to get to their campsite as they'd had. 

* * *

"Something wrong?" 

"This feels funny," Stephen said, frowning at the thermal blanket he was turning over in his hands. 

"Funny ha-ha or funny strange?" 

"Here." He handed the blanket to Jim. "What's it feel like to you?" 

"A thermal blanket." 

"Doesn't it feel...nubbly, kind of?" 

"No, it feels smooth. But depending on how far I've got touch turned up, it could feel like a lot of things. I suppose nubbly is one. Why, did you somehow manage to sunburn your palms and now they're oversensitive?" 

Stephen, astonishingly, actually appeared to take the question seriously for a moment, examining his hands critically. "No. Here." He took the blanket back and his eyes widened again. "It's gone." 

"The nubbly?" 

"Yeah." The younger man shook his head in bewilderment. 

"I think you're the one letting thoughts of things sentinel mess with you," Jim opined. "You know you still have an overactive imagination." 

"I guess," Stephen said quietly. He looked at the configuration of their bedrolls. "Jim, do you want me to move my bedroll back over, leave them like this again, or do you want to reorganize them into one big one?" 

Jim was quiet a moment. "I was going to ask you that. Me, I...I'd like to be close to you. I have this lurking fear of another panic attack. But I'd want to anyway," he added very softly. 

Stephen lifted his head to look over his shoulder at Jim, where the latter stood, a little behind him. The younger man was touched by the uncharacteristic admission about the 'lurking fear' and the desire for comfort, but didn't show his surprise in any way beyond his wide-eyed gaze upward. All he said was "I'd like to be close to you, too. I..." he looked down and finished "...I always loved waking up in your arms." 

He felt Jim's fingers touching his hair gently, but the older man didn't say anything. 

They ended up with Stephen spooned up behind Jim. "Hey." 

"Mm-hm." Jim smiled. This was the fourth evening of their trip, and Jim had started not only expecting to chat with Stephen before they slept, but looking forward to it. The talks they had when one or more of them woke _up_ in the middle of the night could be pretty draining, especially when there were panic attacks involved, but these just made him think of how they'd do the same thing when they were teenagers, sometimes for hours. 

"You smell good." The semi-surprised way he said it made it less a general statement and more a comment on Jim's smell of the moment. 

Jim grinned and chuckled without opening his eyes. "I knew I felt you sniffing around back there. Do I smell like the big patch of mint we ate lunch in?" 

"Yeah. Um, and some other...you smell like the woods, I guess is what I'm getting at; so do I. Well, that and camphor. But there's something...how do I put it...underneath that. A _you_ smell." 

"You've known what I smell like since we were kids. Even a normal sense of smell would remember that." 

"I _don't_ remember it being like this." Stephen shook his head slightly, sighing. "But then, you _were_ a kid, and before we came out here, aside from the occasional hug, I haven't had a chance to be this close to you since you turned into the cantankerous old fart you've become. It's probably just some kind of hormone thing." 

"If I'm a fart why do I smell good?" 

"Sick fuck." Stephen tickled. Jim smacked his hand lightly, then grabbed it and pulled it up to kiss. 

"We are acting way too cute for a couple of grown men," Stephen chuckled. 

"Well, we're half queer. We'll plead the fruit gene if anyone calls us on it." 

"Is there a word for someone who's attracted to their brother? Like there are for being attracted to people of the same sex? Besides acting on it being incest, I mean." 

"Um...I have no idea. Ask Dana next time we go in. Why do you ask? Thinking of adding it to your business cards? 'Stephen Ellison, full partner, BME and Associates, brotherlusting fagboy. No reasonable offers refused'." 

Stephen cracked up against Jim's back, joining Jim's laughter. "Fuck, I might have to have some of those printed up just to stick in a few Christmas cards. I mean like Dana's," Stephen halted Jim's pending sarcastic query by answering it before Jim could get it out. "I was just wondering. Damn, you smell good." 

Jim chuckled again. "Should I quit bathing so as not to wash it off?" 

"I think that'd ruin the effect completely in about twenty-four hours. Less if you move much." He started tugging on Jim's shoulder, trying to get him to turn over; Jim struggled and muttered in pretended annoyance before suddenly flipping over and pulling Stephen close into his arms. "How's your back?" 

"Mostly better. But I'm surprised you can even touch camphor ice." 

"I like the smell, actually, as long as I don't get hit with it unprepared and end up with my eyes watering." In demonstration, he buried his face in the nape of Stephen's neck and sniffed audibly. "You, mint and camphor. Nice." 

"I would never have expected being sniffed to be such a turn-on," Stephen murmured. 

"How about this?" Jim whispered, and extended his tongue to lick a slow, softly-stroking pattern up the side of his brother's neck, tasting the salty, sweet flesh. Stephen moaned, long and low. His hands clenched reflexively in the heavy muscle of Jim's back, then began to slide down and fastened on his ass, pulling Jim up higher, closer; he rolled on his back and accepted Jim's weight on top of him, moaned again at the hard pressure of their groins pushing together. "Jim..." 

Jim's mouth ghosted over his brother's face; the soft lips; fluttering, closed eyelids; the faintly sun-darkened skin over the cheekbones. "I love you," he breathed almost inaudibly; Stephen could feel the words, feel Jim saying them, feel his own response and know that Jim could sense it, too. 

"Jim..." Stephen's eyes came open, meeting Jim's, souls linking through the gaze, blue reaching out for blue. "Make me believe. I know you can. You can give me what I need to _know_ you won't leave again, and I want to believe, I'll let go, let go with you...just let go with me." 

Jim moaned now, softly, too. 

"I love you, Jim. I can't do it without you. Let go with me." 

And their eyes stayed together, and they moved, touched, met, caressed...believed. 

Jim could hear the crashing in the distance, coming closer...barriers, one by one, cracking, sundering, falling..."Stephen," he murmured, the name like an invocation, an affirmation. "Stephen." 

"Jim." 

Blue reaching back to blue...barriers...falling... 

* * *

Blair whirled, his lantern nearly crashing against the bole of a tree, as a masculine scream of pain and fear rent the dark. 

"Ooooohhhh SHIT," he said, for about the two hundredth time that day. Too late. But at least now he could hope to pinpoint their location. 

As he was scrambling off again in the direction of the sound, a loping brown shape appeared ahead and to his right, just outside the pool of light cast by the lantern. "Where the hell have _you_ been?" Blair shouted. "I could have been there a couple of hours ago if you'd showed up back at the trail head, ya damn bear!" 

As they got closer, Blair could pick out Jim's panicked shouts, begging Stephen to tell him what was wrong, in the muddle of noise--Stephen's screams, the mournful hornking of the bear, forest night sounds. 

"Just hang on, Stephen, I'm almost there--SHIT!" Again. Blair had done a dive over a ridge that hid a little creek from easy view. For a miracle, he was suspended like a human bridge plank across the freshet; nothing had actually touched the water. "Fuck. How do I get out of _this_?" 

Stephen screamed again. Blair moved. Fine, one wet foot, he could cope with--for another miracle, his boot came down on a flat, apparently stable rock. He used the leverage to shove himself into a lunge that landed him in a heap on the far bank. The bear hornked, half-visible in the crazy shadows from the wildly swinging lantern as Blair scrambled to his feet and kept moving. 

A subjective eternity later, following the sounds and half-seen glimpses of bear, he burst out of the heavy growth into a clearing. He could hear rushing water nearby. Even better, he could see their largest tent pitched less than thirty yards away, lantern light shining through the netting. Yeah, even from here, it was easy to see there was a large and highly agitated man in there, being unsuccessfully restrained by an even larger man who was hampered by being terrified of hurting the first one. Blair thought grimly, putting on a burst of speed, that as well as Jim's frantic questions indicated that the older Ellison had no idea what was wrong with his brother. 

"Jim, leggo and get outta the way!" Blair yelled, throwing down pack and lantern and peeling his partner off Stephen. Hm, they were both naked. Well, that was some help. Stephen sure didn't need clothes on until they could get this under control. 

"Blair! What the hell--" 

"Go into my pack and pull out that first aid kit!" Blair was struggling to stay on top of Stephen, whose desperate cries of pain were about to break his heart. 'Keep cool, Blair...' 

Jim hadn't moved. "DO IT!" Blair belted. 

Jim moved, retrieving the kit. 

"Get an intramuscular shot ready. That middle bottle in the top compartment. Fill the syringe halfway. Move!" 

"I hope you know what you're doing," Jim muttered grimly. 

"Got it? I'll hold him, just shoot it into the big muscle, there, in his thigh. That's right. Rub, now, get it worked in...it might take a few moments..." 

"Blair, what'd I just give him?" 

"Enough Demerol to knock over a horse." 

"Why?!" 

"Relax. They've given you Demerol in the hospital; the only negative side effects it has on you are numbing up your senses until they are, for practical purposes, normal level rather than sentinel level; and putting you to sleep, which is not exactly an unknown phenomenon with Demerol. He should be able to take it with no problem, even now. I had you inject it into the muscle instead of giving it to him subdermally to help control the rate at which his system absorbs it." Blair was conducting the vital-signs check that Jim was too distraught at the moment to do. 

"'Even now'? Blair, what are you doing here? How did you...what's wrong with..." 

"Here." Blair handed the naked Jim one of the thermal blankets and started working on getting Stephen into the bedroll again, and getting said bedroll in some kind of coherent shape. "I'm here because I got a little visit from our spirit friends, telling me that all was not right with you. More properly, that all was not right with Stephen, or, even _more_ properly, that all _is_ suddenly right with Stephen, and he might not have survived that without something to act as batting for his senses." 

"His...senses...?" 

"Stephen is a sentinel, Jim. It's just taken him this long to manifest the senses, probably for the same reason you suppressed yours--your father, the whole trauma with Bud, and everything that surrounded it, most importantly the effect on you." 

"But...why now? What...why didn't..." 

"Jim, sit down. Well, yeah, get something on and then sit down, I mean. Try to relax." His voice gentled as he forced himself to calm as well. "He'll be okay now." Blair got Stephen situated, gently stroking the soft hair that shone in the lantern light. "I'm sorry," he murmured to Stephen as Jim climbed into sweats and socks. "I should have seen it. It should have occurred to me." 

He looked over at Jim. "I _have_ seen Stephen do some startling things, but I never paid much attention. I was sure that if he were an operant sentinel, he'd have manifested full ability at least once in childhood. I dismissed what I saw as either wishful thinking on my part, or my imagination--I'm so used to observing the way _you_ use your abilities. Besides, like I've said, there are plenty of people with slightly heightened senses, or one or two extremely heightened ones. Stephen being one of those people wouldn't be odd, his being your brother. And of course you wouldn't have realized; from your point of view, his senses would have looked about the same as everyone else's, considering how far above ours yours are. Plus you would have been used to it from growing up with him." 

Jim, dressed, came up and knelt at Stephen's other side, touching his face, tenderly wiping at the streaks and tear stains. "Why now?" he asked again, softly. 

"I'm willing to bet it has to do with what the two of you have been trying to accomplish. It's not only periods of isolation that can shock the senses out of remission, or into full operation in the first place. That's just one possible cause. Probably it's been building over the last year or so, since you two started talking again. And then here you were, out in the middle of nowhere, alone together...and, I'm willing to guess, you finally succeeded?" 

Jim nodded wordlessly, still caressing Stephen's face. He looked up then and said "Thanks for getting here as soon as you could. Thanks for helping him." 

"We're not exactly out of the woods, if you'll pardon the expression. He's an emerging sentinel at the age of thirty-five. There's nothing in the literature explaining or describing that circumstance, and I don't have any protocol for it as a guide." 

"You _can_ help him, though, can't you? I mean, you didn't have any protocol for dealing with _my_ senses, either, when we first started working together." 

"Oh, yeah, I'll definitely do my best for him. But he's in for some pretty major hell. You should be prepared for that. I know how you hate to see him hurt. But you're going to have to stand back and let me do my job, at least to a degree, unless you want him doing an Alex, or something even worse. She was a bit more like you, before the temple--she needed help, but she was already using her senses to some extent. Stephen has no experience with them at all...and apparently there wasn't much of a gradual increase. They just hit." 

"There _was_ a gradual increase," Jim said grimly. "I've been ignoring the signs, too. It just never occurred to me...did Alex have heightened senses in childhood?" Jim wondered. 

"There are some things in my notes that would certainly seem to indicate that she did, but I didn't get the chance to delve into her past with the dreams of the temple, unusual perceptual abilities, all that. My guess would be yes, though." Blair sighed. "I'm glad you've found some kind of resting ground, the two of you...glad you've found what you needed. I would have said that earlier, but..." 

"...but things were busy, right. Thanks, Blair. I knew you'd be glad for us, I just..." 

"...weren't sure if that was _all_ I'd be?" Blair smiled and shook his head. "For whatever reason, Jim, I can't find it in my heart to feel threatened by the fact that you love your brother. Hell, _I_ love your brother. He's a lovable guy, certain personality quirks notwithstanding. He's a very hard-headed and efficient businessman--who somehow hung on to his heart. Even after the way he was raised. I credit you for that, for the early part. Dana for the rest. And his own strength of character, of course. It's all right, Jim, we'll worry about that later. Right now I suggest we get some rest, because when he comes out of this--he'll still be sense-numbed for quite a while after he wakes up--" Blair reached over and his fingers met Jim's where they rested lightly on Stephen's hair; he held out his other hand, and Jim took it, squeezing it gently. Blair squeezed back and finished "--the three of us are going to have a _hell_ of a lot to discuss." 

Outside the tent, a bear hornked quietly. Jim looked up at the sound, saying "The strangest thing. This bear has been hanging out around here ever since..." he trailed off and looked at Blair. 

"That's right," the younger man said, nodding. "Jim jaguar, Blair wolf...and Stephen, apparently, bear." 

"This is not a spirit bear." 

"Why?" 

"Because he eats, he sleeps, and he takes dumps. Stephen had to clean one up." 

"Does he have blue eyes?" 

"No, he has normal bear eyes." 

"Then I guess you're right. The bear that visited me had blue eyes. I'd still venture to say Stephen's the reason this one is keeping you company, though." 

"I guess he must be...Blair, you go ahead and lie down with Stephen, get some rest. You look like you had a hell of a time getting here." 

"I got turned around, big surprise, and had to hike back over several miles of what turned out to be a deer path, not the trail." Blair let go of Jim; stroking Stephen's hair once, he sighed and shrugged out of his jacket. "It so totally sucked. I felt like a moron." 

"A lot of people mistake deer trails for human trails," Jim said. "I can see how you'd have been frustrated, though, knowing what was going to be coming up with Stephen, if it hadn't already." 

"I was pretty sure it hadn't. I'd been getting...I dunno, some kind of nice vibe, psychic love connection or something, and I decided it had to be you guys. I hoped it meant you were getting busy and making some progress, which apparently you were. By the way, did Stephen step up his workouts or something?" Blair let out a low, appreciative whistle as he rummaged in his pack for something. 

Jim managed to smile as he pulled his boots on. "That's what he says. Wears it well, doesn't he." 

"I'll say. Whatever you're going to be doing out there, Jim--thinking, walking--don't do it for too long. We've got to get all the gear packed back up and get out of here early tomorrow; I still have commitments at school. I already had to renege on one promise of payback. Besides, Stephen should be in controlled conditions, and you guys still have several days of your week off. We'd better make the best use of them we can if we want Stephen to be able to go back to work any time soon." 

"Blair...he told me he didn't think he could handle sentinel senses, that he'd crack up. What if he's like I was? What if he just wants them to go away?" 

"Oh, yeah, man. That's exactly what he's gonna want," Blair nodded emphatically, stripping down to his underwear and climbing in to the big bedroll next to Stephen. "All the way. If I tell him I can't give him that, his next move is gonna be what your first one was--the hospital. It's going to take both of us to convince him that, while I can teach him-- _we_ can teach him--how to control his senses to the point he never has to use them past the level of human normal if he doesn't want to, learning that control over them is the only choice he's got--there isn't anything you or I or the medical community can provide him that'll _reliably_ just make them go away, in any permanent sense. Unless he wants to stay doped up the rest of his life." 

"Stephen hates drugs." 

"They probably mess with him, like they do you; just not as bad. Until now, at least. But we have to make him understand that as quick as we can. You would almost certainly have wound up with a diagnosis of schizophrenia if I hadn't found you, and you'd kept at the medical-treatment angle. We don't want Stephen on Thorazine the rest of his life, nodding and smiling and generally not being in there." Blair had gotten comfortable, eyelids drooping after a day of almost uninterrupted exercise. He came to rest with his forehead against Stephen's shoulder and his hand splayed on the other man's chest, but while that position might have looked suppliant, as though Blair was taking comfort from Stephen, somehow it managed to convey the exact opposite feeling. Blair was being protective. "I'm out like a light, here, man," he yawned. "Like I said, don't stay out too long, okay?" 

"Sure," Jim reassured him, leaning over to kiss his cheek. "Go to sleep." 

"Mmp." Blair pretty much was. Jim kissed Stephen too, then rose and moved out of the tent enclosure. 

The bear was sitting by the water. Jim messed in one of the coolers a moment, sealed it, walked up and sat down next to him. The bear looked at him calmly. 

"Hi," Jim said. "I'm Jim." He handed the bear a couple of pieces of raw bacon, half a jar of strawberry preserves, and three marshmallows. 

The bear took the food, hornked softly, and began to munch contentedly. Jim sighed and looked up at the sky. "Nice to meet you, too," he murmured. 

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In this series, Jim and Stephen had a loving, consensual sexual relationship in their teens, and have been rediscovering those feelings over the year since they began speaking again. 


End file.
